Quilting

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I love an opportunity to play and my monthly improv bee blocks always offer me that chance.

In May, Ellyn selected a happy palette of colors for us to play with. Her theme was Shine. She shared this quote along with her prompt:

"In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present."

--Frances Bacon

Together with the theme of Shine, Ellyn asked us to use a variety of saturated sunshiny colors (inspiration list below) with a little Kona Lagoon (a turquoise which she provided) in each block.

Oranges: Tangerine, Kumquat, Orange, Orangeade
Cool Pinks: Bright pink, Candy pink, Sassy Pink, Bubblegum, Carnation, Peony,
Pink
Warm Yellows: Papaya, Sunny, Duckling, Corn Yellow, Canary

Pretty early on I knew I wanted to do something with radiating lines. Then I decided on a ring made of radiating lines. Here's the process on my first block:

My first step was to sew together wedges to make an approximate circle of fabric. I wasn't planning to use the center so I didn't concern myself with everything coming together neatly in the middle. I pressed my seams open (my general preference).

Using templates (not shown) I cut a hole out of the center of my pieced wedges and a coordinating piece of yellow to fill in the hole. Due to the bulk of the pieced seems I pressed this seam to the center. (You'll see that below.)

My next step was to use my template to cut the outer edge of my ring. I drew my templates on the dull side of freezer paper so I could iron the shiny side in place in order to cut my fabric.

You can see above that I cut with 1/4" seam allowance around that template piece. The marks you see were registration marks I transferred to my fabric on both pieces to use for lining things up and pinning in place.

Here's a quick peek of the back at this point. One thing you might notice here is that there are two lines on stitching on that first seam around the center yellow piece. This is because I did a stay stitch on the inner edge of the ring, 1/8" from the edge, before attaching it onto the yellow. I was worried since the ring was the concave edge for the next seam. When sewing curves together the concave piece gets stretched a bit. This stay stitch meant I didn't pop the seams in the ring. The important part of the stay stitch was across the seams, so on the wider strips of fabric I broke the thread so I could do the necessary stretch while sewing that seam.

My final step was to attach the background yellow and trim the block to about a 12 1/2" square.

The second block that I made for Ellyn is composed of improv quarter circle blocks with filler pieces to bring the block up to 12 1/2" square.

I hope you have a sunshiny day!

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I like to participate in quilt challenges, and I've made projects for three of the previous Pantone Quilt Challenges over the years (Greenery, Ultra Violet, and Viva Magenta). I've just realized that I have always submitted to the "Just the Top" category, so this shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. I'm submitting my Mocha Mousse quilt top this year.

In choosing a palette, I considered many options for how I might be able to add other colors to the palette while still featuring Mocha Mousse. In the end I decided to stick with a monochromatic palette, edited down slightly from a bundle I purchased from Sewfinity.

Inspired by my Red Improv Log Cabin quilt, I started with a sawtooth star in the center. My plan is to echo the star with quilting lines, and to fill each section with interesting motifs, similar to the quilting on my inspiration quilt. Though, with the mocha solids, the quilting will have more of an opportunity to really be the star.

  • Mocha Mousse Log Cabin
  • 36.5" x 36.5"
  • Sarah Goer, USA

I started by making my 12" (finished) Sawtooth Star for the center, then I worked intuitively choosing each fabric as I went for my log cabin design.

It's so interesting to me how colors shift depending on the lighting. This one was taken indoors with an overhead light that is white in color. The outdoor photo above was taken on a sunny day, with the quilt in full shade.

I'm linking up to the Pantone Quilt Challenge. Thank you so much to Sarah Ruiz and Elizabeth Ray for hosting, to the judges, and to all the sponsors. And congratulations to everyone who found inspiration with this year's Pantone Color of the Year and submitted something. I really enjoy the variety of the projects submitted.

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This week's Project QUILTING challenge is Follow Your Arrow. Our one requirement was to include an arrow shape. "Chevrons can be a very modern, streamlined arrow shape. You can find lots of patterns for arrowhead-and-feathered-shaft Robin Hood style arrows."

Immediately I looked for arrow prints and landed on this black and white Alison Glass print. I love a palette of black white and one color. I chose pink and decided to use 8 different pink solids. (These included Kona Azalea, Bright Pink, Pomegranate, Punch, and Watermelon. The others were unlabeled.)

I went with a simple checkerboard layout of 6 1/2" squares for my 24" x 24" NICU quilt. As of Saturday evening I hadn't sewn a stitch. I got up at 5:45am (the new time after time change) to finish up my quilt Sunday morning. Some speed choices in the interest of finishing before the deadline included: single piece of fabric for the backing, no basting quilt sandwich before quilting, minimal quilting, quilting in just one color thread: Aurifil 50wt Fuchsia (#4020) (if I had more time and more thread options I would have used a variety of pinks), chose remnant binding from my binding box, attached the binding with the same thread I quilted with, machine bound (as I usually do).

Tada!

I chose a lovely pink Alison Glass print for the back.

I'm linking up on Kim's blog for the Project QUILTING Follow Your Arrow challenge. One more challenge for the season, starting March 16!

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