Tag Archives: challenge quilt

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The San Mateo County Fair (June 5-14 this year) has a large quilt display within the Home Arts Maker Department division in the exhibition hall. I've enjoyed going to the fair in past years to walk through the entire exhibition hall. This year I'll have five quilts on display at the fair. This is one of them. Silicon Valley Modern Quilt Guild (which I joined last Fall) has two challenge categories at the fair under the Quilt Challenge Groups division. The Let's Meet Our Panel challenge asked us to use a panel. I've had students use improv work from class to create a quilt featuring a panel (like the one by Carol O. in this post) and have wanted to make one myself for some time. Since I didn't have a panel on hand, Rochelle from my guild shared this Monsters Inc. panel with me.

I started out by choosing solids from the five main characters on the panel. I did pretty well finding the coordinating colors in my solids drawer. On the left: Free Spirit Berry, unidentified light blue, unidentified olive green. On the top: Kona Jamaica, Kona Violet, Kona Cactus. On the right: Kona Oasis, Kona Peony, Kona Denim. On the bottom: unidentified pale blue, Kona Tomato, Kona Corsage.

Initially I thought I'd have each side be the colors of one of the characters, but there are five monsters (initially the Yeti blended in to the background to me) so I decided to mix up the colors to create the palettes for each side. For each side I chose a general geometric idea or starting point and started cutting fabric. With most of my improv work I don't know exactly how things will end up. This was no exception. Once I created the strip set and cross cut into pieces for the bottom side, I auditioned to decide if I wanted to insert strips of Corsage or not.

As I finished the improv sections, I added them to my design wall. As I tell students in class, I don't care about the messy edges until those edges are going to be sewn to something else. So you can see on my design wall that while the piecing is done, I haven't yet trimmed the borders to size. I'd been thinking about improv sections that would finish approximately 5" wide and I work oversized so I can trim down to my desired finished size.

From the beginning I figured I would miter the corners on my border. I creased the panel on the diagonal so I could use that as my guide. I figured I would just puzzle it out, but didn't have time to be wrong and need to redo things, so I found this tutorial to watch about the process of mitering corners. Thankfully the process went pretty smoothly. I trimmed both edges of the top border before attaching it, but then decided to trim only the inner edge of the other sides and wait until after quilting to trim the whole quilt to size.

Two down, two to go...

Using the diagonal creases through the center panel as my guide I did walking foot quilting in a 2" grid on the diagonal. My first line of quilting was 1" to the side of the creased diagonal. Then I used the guide with my walking foot to space the rows of stitching two inches apart. I quilted with 50wt Aurifil Dove (#2600), a light neutral that I thought would blend in well with all the colors.

The finished quilt is approximately 27" x 27". I machine bound with a medium grey solid after trimming the quilt. (This was the last photo I took, but I was able to steam out my diagonal creases before dropping it off to the fair.)

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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.