Tag Archives: challenge quilt

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I've made it through another one week quilt challenge. And I'm not even posting about it at the very last minute! There are eleven whole hours until the deadline. This week's challenge was "Carolina Lily." Let me back up a little first. I follow Leasa on Instagram and love her Sew My Stash inspiration. (Side note: I've purchased no fabric in 2017.) She posted recently about using the good stuff and issued her first 2017 Sew My Stash challenge to use our coveted fabric. So, last week, before the Project QUILTING prompt was announced, I declared that whatever it was, I would use my Tula Pink fabric. It's the collection of fabric that goes most untouched in my stash. Okay, back to the challenge. The Carolina Lily is a beautiful orange flower. It's also the inspiration for a very traditional quilt block of the mid-19th century. First thing was first, I chose some fabrics from the Tula pile. The most obviously chose was this print from The Birds & the Bees. I love that it reminds me of the speckled pattern on the Carolina Lily.

I used appliqué in my last challenge and was determined to not go that route this time. I debated an improv pieced Carolina Lily, but in the end I decided to traditionally piece the block. Except that I redesigned it to only have one tricky inset seam. (Photo below.) Here's my initial fabric pull. I added some Alison Glass fabrics to the project, because I love her fabric and Quilting Jetgirl is hosting an Alison Glass challenge this month, too! So there we have it, three challenges in one little mini quilt!

I would have loved to make a larger, scrappier quilt that encompassed more of these fabrics, but it's a one week challenge and I'm also working on three other quilts at the moment. I had to simplify. My final piece featured two Tula prints (the above print and the green print), two Alison Glass prints (orange print and the grey background) and a Kona solid. My center block is 5" finished. Here's the inset seam and the finished block.

With borders the quilt finished at about 7" x 7". It's quilted with Aurifil 50 wt. #1133 (Burnt Orange), #1114 (Grass Green), and #2605 (Grey).

And the back.

P.S. Three years ago today, I posted my first blog post. I've had such a wonderful time and I've met so many lovely people throughout this journey. I'm celebrating by kicking off my pattern writing business, starting a newsletter, and a couple other upcoming blog changes. Thank you all for visiting!

I'm linking up to Project Quilting 8.2, Quilting Jetgirl Alison Glass Challenge, and Sew My Stash 2017 First Challenge (via IG).

Project QUILTING online voting will begin Sunday 1/22 around 11am PST.  There are over 70 projects linked up so far. Check out these beautiful quilts and vote for your favorites. (Mine is #72.)

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I've admired Project QUILTING for many seasons. Last year I even planned to participate, but for whatever reason that didn't happen. Project QUILTING is a series of one week quilt challenges. That's not a lot of time to make a quilt from conception to finish! January 1 kicked off the new season and I made sure to keep my schedule clear enough that I'd be able to participate. I didn't think it would come down to finishing it in the last hour and posting to the blog in the last fifteen minutes of the challenge! The good news is that when you're reading this, you can probably already click over for voting on the challenge. (You get 10 votes; cast them by clicking on the heart you see at the top right of each quilt pic. Mine is #140.) (Voting has closed.) There are so many great interpretations (142 of them!) of the theme!

This week's challenge was "Eight is Great!" There are so many great things that involve the number eight. The prompt mentioned a bunch of interesting ones: octopus, stop sign, magic eight ball, math, music... I started with sketches that involved music and roman numerals, and eventually thought of the repeating 8 8 8. This is season 8 of the challenge. The theme for this week's challenge is 8. And the quilt was due on the 8th. The image of three repeating eights screamed slot machine and my design was born.

I initially sketched my design to also finish at 8" x 8", but in the end I wanted to see more of my colorful background fabric. I love that it makes me think of the light show on Fremont Street in Vegas. I also initially planned to piece the slot machine and only after calculating the sizes to cut all my pieces did I decide to use fusible appliqué instead.

Here's my initial fabric pull. I later added the fabrics for the letters and numbers. You can see the fabric I fussy cut for my coins.

The mini quilt finished at about 10" x 18". This is the second time I've done a faced binding. I used the faced binding tutorial that my friend Mel recommended. Such a great, quick finish for a little challenge quilt.

 

Thanks for visiting! I'm linking up to Project QUILTING 8.1.

 

This month marks my blog's third anniversary and the addition of a twice monthly newsletter dedicated to color and design inspiration for quilting! Click above to stay in touch and receive modern and contemporary inspiration direct to your inbox! The first edition will be out by the end of the month.

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Nothing like a deadline! It became obvious on social media the past couple days that I was in good company with many other quilters finishing up (or, in the case of some, just starting) our QuiltCon submissions for tonight's 10pm PST deadline.

Submitted!

Here's my sneak peak of my quilt (full reveal when I blog about the entire project), Perspective, which I submitted for the American Patchwork & Quilting Nine-Patch Challenge. I enjoyed playing with the geometry of a nine-patch by piecing skewed blocks. Then I had this wonderful recommendation (I'm looking you, Sarah N.) to pebble the background. I estimate I spent about 13 hours over the past two days to pebble the quilt. (My arms are so sore... so it totally counts as a workout, too, right?) I'm very pleased with the results of those marathon quilting sessions. And I'm feeling quite confident with pebble quilting now!

I also submitted my Retro Trailer mini quilt.

Now that the Thanksgiving holiday and my QuiltCon submissions are behind me, I can settle back into a more normal routine and get focused on some goals: quilting, blogging and otherwise. Oh, and bee blocks for November. Thank you for your patience! ;-)

Thanks for visiting! Happy sewing!