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This week the Project QUILTING challenge is Sew Not a Square. Specifically, the quilt could not be a square or have any squares in it's composition. "use no square shapes in doing it"

I was out of town until Monday evening on my trip to QuiltCon and came down with symptoms and tested positive for Covid on Tuesday evening {whomp whomp} so I've been isolating from my family. I've also had limited energy as you can imagine. I still wanted to participate in this week's challenge so I grabbed a few supplies from my studio to bring into isolation.

When starting a quilt challenge with just a day left until the deadline, it is wise to think of how to get it done. Here were my rules for myself.

▪️Work very small.
▪️Limit options.
▪️Don’t overthink it.

I knew it would all be hand stitched. And I decided I would make it round. I began by cutting out a small circle from my batting (not sure why I didn't trim after the piecing). Then I pieced my smallest, irregular scraps using pearl cotton thread.

Once I was done stitching the quilt top I trimmed the backing fabric, and then the quilt top, to match the batting circle.

Once it was all trimmed, I cut strips of fabric a bit wider than 1/4" on a bias and stretched the strips a bit to fray the edges. Then I used more pearl cotton to kind of couch my fabric strips over the raw edge of my quilt. I'm not sure what to call the stitching I used... is it a blanket stitch?

1084 days from the start of the pandemic to my first case. (I'm thankful that after a few days I'm starting to improv.) And I have never made what I have considered a Covid Quilt or Pandemic Quilt... so this is My Little Covid Quilt. It's about 2 inches in diameter.

Thanks for visiting! I'm linking up on Kim's blog for the Project QUILTING Sew Not a Square challenge.

As a longtime participant of Project QUILTING, I'm excited to be a sponsor this year. Each week as a Weekly Sponsor I have contributed a PDF pattern to one winner. I'm also a Grand Prize Sponsor. The prize is a spot in one of my self-hosted open enrollment live virtual workshops.

Happy quilting!

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Another late night Saturday start for this week's Project QUILTING challenge, A Novel Project. 67 minutes from fabric pull to finished mini mini quilt this evening. Woo hoo!

At the beginning of the week I shared other quilts I have made that were inspired by books, but I had a hard time deciding what I wanted to make for the challenge. Earlier in the week, I scrolled through my Goodreads of what I've read in the last couple years and wasn't particularly motivated by what I have read recently.

I've been inspired by Margaret Fleisher's improv book cover blocks. See a few of them in this Instagram post and hear Margaret talk about her book cover project at about 6 minutes in to this video. You can also scroll back farther in her instagram feed to see the posts of each cover in 2020.

One of my basic tenets for Project QUILTING is to work small. While I admire those who make a baby quilt, lap quilt, or larger, in a week, I know that my schedule and bandwidth do not allow for that. I usually aim for 16" square or smaller. And the later in the week I get started, the smaller my quilts tend to be. This week was emotionally and physically challenging, and while I considered options and looked for inspiration numerous times, nothing was grabbing me. This evening before I settled on my back up idea, I took one more scroll through the books I've read in the last couple years and this time the cover of 32 Yolks by Eric Ripert stood out. I really like the strong graphic nature of the cover. So I pulled some fabric and got to work.

While I could have done some improv curve piecing I wasn't in the mood for the potential fussiness of that avenue. And I really loved the frayed edge of my scrap of yellow fabric. This drove two decisions. (1) I would use fusible appliqué. And (2) my yolk wouldn't be a curve at all, instead using what I had with the frayed piece of yellow. I got out my MistyFuse and improv cut a piece of blue fabric for the lower right. (I cut this one twice before I had a shape I liked.) Then I picked at the curved edge to fray the edge of the blue fabric to complement my frayed yellow fabric. Next, I cut MistyFuse to fit my yellow and blue fabrics and appliquéd them in place. Note: the fusible was applied just inside the frayed edge so that element could be a little bit dimensional.

I used two cardstock mats to envision the trimmed composition, added minimal quilting along the inner edge of the yellow and blue fabrics, and trimmed it 1/4" larger in each direction than the finished quilt would be. Then I used my 1/4" food to topstitch 1/4" from the edge around the quilt twice, then I trimmed down to 1/8" beyond my topstitching.

My mini mini quilt, Just One Yolk, finished just under 3" x 4".

The back has my fusible "Sarah Goer Quilts" label.

And here's my finished quilt next to the cover. Thank you to Margaret for the inspiration!

Thanks for visiting! I'm linking up on Kim's blog for the Project QUILTING A Novel Project challenge.

As a longtime participant of Project QUILTING, I'm excited to be a sponsor this year. Each week as a Weekly Sponsor I have contributed a PDF pattern to one winner. I'm also a Grand Prize Sponsor. The prize is a spot in one of my self-hosted open enrollment live virtual workshops.

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I'm excited about the announcement for this week's Project QUILTING challenge: A Novel Project. The one big rule is that our projects need to be inspired by a book we've read. Easy peasy! So many options. (I hope you'll consider playing along and making a quilt between now and Sunday!)

In the challenge theme announcement post Trish shared a number of her book inspired projects. It got me thinking about which quilts I have made inspired by books. Here's a wrap-up of those projects.

***click on the photos to read more about each project***

The first thing that came to mind is Very Hungry Caterpillar. I adore the children's book and when the Very Hungry Caterpillar fabric came out I admired it but had no reason to buy it... until I found out it was pregnant with my first. I think Very Hungry Caterpillar fabric was the first baby-related item I purchased once I knew I was expecting.

My son's crib quilt was the first project I made with those fabrics (back in 2010). It was probably the first thing I pieced improvisationally, starting with the panels and building around them until it was the size of a crib mattress (odd dimensions, I know now).

I had purchased *a lot* of the Very Hungry Caterpillar fabric, which resulted in at least three more quilts, the last of which was a twin-sized bed quilt for my son which took me way too long to finish. Oh, and the pillow case on there, too!

In 2016, when my sister was expecting her first, the baby;'s room had a Wizard of Oz theme which inspired me to make a Wizard of Oz baby quilt. I absolutely adore this quilt. It was designed as I went. The Emerald City is appliqué and the yellow brick road is reverse appliqué.

In 2021, I used a Willy Wonka inspired fabric pull for a Project QUILTING challenge.

One of the very first quilts I made was from a book was from Quilts from The Quiltmaker's Gift with patterns out of the delightful children's book The Quiltmaker's Gift.

The last reference I could find to books on my blog was not a project, but a fabric pull. Fiction and Fabric was a fun activity using a book as inspiration for pulling together a small palette of fabric.

Now to decide what I will make this week!