Quilting

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Thank Goodness It's FINISHED Friday!

Welcome to TGIFF! Thanks for joining us this week!

It is nearly the end of the last one-week Project QUILTING challenge of the season. The challenge for this week is SCRAPtastic and requires that we use at least 12 fabrics. I started with one of my newsletter palettes from this week and built a fabric pull from my stash around those colors.

At this point I didn't have a solid plan for what I'd make and I had one day. I considered a workshop sample or another mini quilt based on a letter of the alphabet, and I finally settled on making a lined drawstring bag as a gift for a friend. I made an open wide zipper pouch as a gift for an earlier Project QUILTING challenge this season.

Since the theme of the challenge was SCRAPtastic, I decided on some improv piecing. I basically sewed slabs together and then cut them up to attach the pieces to other units. Just like my quilts, the slab was stitched with Aurifil 50wt thread and seams were pressed open. I needed a panel that was 10 1/2" by 24 1/2" for the exterior of the bag. (I opted to not have an accent fabric along the top of the exterior.) I worked from yardage, but this technique could easily be applied to scraps!

I love this tutorial and have made numerous lined drawstring bags in the past. It's a quick project. I sewed this up, including the scrappy exterior, in an afternoon. And it doesn't require any interfacing or hardware. Quick and easy!

 

In Other News...

Voting is open for the Craftsy 2018 Quilt Designer Fellowship. I'm a finalist and I'd be so excited to win! If you haven't voted yet today, click over to see the work of the ten finalists and vote for your favorite. Voting ends on March 23 at 11:59pm MST.

I'm linking up to Project QUILTING, Needle & Thread Thursday, and Finish It Friday.

 

 

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I decided to go simple and small for this week's Project QUILTING theme of A Stitch in Time.

The products featured in this post were given to me by Island Batik, including products from Aurifil.

This week I was working on two other Island Batik projects, a super secret rep sample of a not-yet-released collection that I'll just say is full of saturated color -- just what I love, and my March "try a technique" project which I'm using my Mountain's Majesty 10" stack for. The stack includes two each of 21 fabrics. (The full line has 46 fabrics!) I prepped my fabric for that project and used about 3/4 of one set of the squares, leaving me a scrap pile of rectangles, one piece of each of the 21 fabrics. I'd already decided to go simple for this week's Project QUILTING challenge and had landed on a 9-patch block mug rug. Ya know... cause A Stitch in Time... Saves... Nine. The Mountain's Majesty collection is a beautiful assortment of neutrals, blues, greens, and purples. I'll be using it all in this month's Island Batik challenge. But for my PQ challenge, I chose my nine favorite prints from the pile to make my 9-patch. I especially love that deep purple in the top left!

I opted for a pillowcase binding and super simple quilting. Just a border around the edge and a square echoing the center square on the 9-patch. The quilting was done with Aurifil 40wt Light Blue Grey (#2610). It is backed with Aspen Leaves in Leprechaun and finished at 8"x8".

I'm linking up to Project QUILTING 9.5. Be sure to check out all the submissions and vote for your favorites (starting Sunday). (Mine is #24.)

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Some finishes are a long time coming. I participated in Cheryl's 2015-2016 Midnight Mystery Quilt and had a finished quilt top in March 2016 at the end of the the quilt along. My projects without deadlines often get stuck at this stage. In April 2017 I had it quilted, then it sat folded up in a pile... with the binding all made and ready to attach. Projects with deadlines, including challenges and patterns, took priority. Well... I finally attended my first sew day with Bay Area Modern last Saturday and brought my mystery quilt along. It was a rocky start with frustration and seam ripping, but I managed to get the binding on that day.

A little recap on my project. The mystery called for four fabrics and in order to pull my fabric entirely from my stash I chose for each of those colors to be scrappy. Orange and pink were chosen because at the time they were the most plentiful (and least used) colors in my stash. I chose the blue and light grey to round out the palette.

Tami quilted it with the Modern Curves panto. I asked her to load the quilt sideways so the waves would be vertical on my quilt.

The quilt is backed in Tula Pink Mini Owl in Pacific, one of the prints I used on the front. It's bound in Kona orange... except for one section of the right edge which used one of the orange prints from the quilt top.

I'm so glad to finally have it finished and am thrilled to add it to the pile of quilts that my family enjoys. It's sure to be used to make a fort in no time!

One of my favorite parts of making a mystery quilt is seeing how everyone else's versions turn out. Check out the Midnight Mystery Quilt Reveal Parade.

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