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This week's Project QUILTING challenge is Birthstone. We were required to use the color of our birthstone. The stone for October is tourmaline. A quick internet search indicated that tourmaline can come in a variety of colors, not just the light pink we usually see in birthstone charts. I was particularly drawn to the watermelon tourmaline, which includes pink. With a Creating a Scrappy Slab lecture/demo last week for Silicon Valley MQG and another coming up tomorrow night for The Northwest Arkansas MQG I had scrappy slab on the mind.

I pulled out my pink, green and black and white scrap bins and set to pull out scraps in light and medium pink and light and dark green to start building some scrappy slab tourmaline.

I worked organically and eventually decided to build two quadrants of the stone and to raw edge appliqué it to a scrappy slab quilted background in white on black. My quilt finished at 6" x 8"

I am donating this piece to the SAQA Spotlight Auction 2025. The fundraiser auction coincides with the 2025 SAQA Conference, but you do not to be attending the SAQA conference or a member of SAQA. Bidding will be open to everyone via the Handbid platform March 26 to April 5. Today was the last day for SAQA members to complete the online submission form for donating artwork to the auction. Glad I got mine done just in time!

The SAQA Spotlight Auction mats each art quilt, so the viewable portion of the quilt is 4 1/2" x 6 1/2".

I'm linking up on Kim's blog for the Project QUILTING Birthstone challenge.

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This week's Project QUILTING challenge is Common Blocks, requiring us to use a minimum of three common quilt blocks in our finished project. Initially I planned to make a NICU quilt with 10" quilt blocks, but after 6 days went by with no progress on the challenge, I downsized and got started today, then I downsized again to the finished project I have to share with you.

My tiny quilt finished at just under 2 1/2" x 3 1/2", featuring a log cabin block, a courthouse steps block, and flying geese.

I used Mini Series paper piecing patterns by Alison Glass & Giucy Guice.

Log Cabin
Courthouse Steps
Flying Geese

Thanks for visiting! I'm linking up on Kim's blog for the Project QUILTING Common Blocks challenge. Congratulations to everyone else who participated in the challenge this week. Next challenge drops on February 16th.

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What is Ombré? Mirriam-Webster says "having colors or tones that shade into each other."

I love a color challenge and this one could be implemented two ways (or maybe more!?). We could use ombré fabric in our design or we could build a palette that was an ombre of color. Somehow we had to include an ombré or a gradient. I chose to build two ombre palettes in pinks and oranges and work them together into a quilt.

Pinks: Kona Bourdeaux, Cerise, Bright Pink*, Dragon Fruit*, Sassy Pink*, and Carnation.

Oranges/Yellows: Kona Flame, Torch, Clementine, Goldfish, Cheddar, and what I'm calling "Not Cheddar" but I have no idea what it actually is. (It was labeled Cheddar, but it clearly isn't.)

*these weren't marked, so I did my best to map them to the Kona color card for identification.

I created a mockup in Adobe Indesign to audition the color placement and make sure I liked my two gradients together. (Thanks to Ellyn for the idea to use Courthouse steps as my design inspiration.)

I quilted with walking foot quilting in two colors, Aurifil 50wt Baby Pink (#2423) and Light Lemon (#2110). It's bound in Kona Burgundy and finished at 19" x 21".

Thanks for visiting! I'm linking up on Kim's blog for the Project QUILTING Ombré challenge. Congratulations to everyone else who participated in the challenge this week. Next challenge drops on February 2nd.