Tag Archives: finished quilt

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This week's final Project QUILTING challenge of the season was "Time Is Up." My initial thought was that I wanted to make a sundial quilt. I opted for a minimalist representation and started with a couple improv pieced curves before adding the triangular "dial" by machine appliqué. I used my free-motion quilting to embellish the design with the clock tick marks and the shadow. My mini quilt finished at 9" x 9".

A great big thank you to Kim (Host) and Trish (Challenge Designer) for a fun season of challenges. It was my first time participating, and I'm wiped out, but I'm really glad that I set aside the time and made it a priority to participate in all six weeks. My two favorite quilts that I made for this season's challenges were for the Tuned Into Texture and Brighter the Better challenges.

I'm linking up to Project Quilting Challenge 6. Voting starts at noon Central time on Sunday. You can check out all the entries and vote on your favorites. (Mine is #82.)

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This week's challenge for Project QUILTING was "well-dressed man." On Tuesday, the kids and I made a trip to Goodwill in search for an inspiring men's jacket. I was interested in a jacket with elbow patches (which this one didn't have) and interesting buttons. I just couldn't resist this plaid jacket! And it had a great solid blue lining, too. We chose a tie to go with it. At the register the man helping us commented that "dad [was] getting a new jacket" and my kids prompted corrected him that it was for me. I laughed and said that I was going to make it into a quilt. He chuckled, then asked if I was serious. I explained the challenge and he asked if I'd bring in my finished quilt to show him.

I knew that I wanted to highlight some of the features of the jacket, but I didn't really have a plan for the construction of my quilt.

I finally got to work deconstructing the jacket on Friday night.

I cut out some sections that I liked, but didn't get back to my sewing machine until almost 10pm on Saturday. With about 12 hours left in the challenge, I knew I had to take my friend Mel's advise and work small. I edited down my initial ideas and decided on making the blocks even smaller than I'd planned. One feature that I liked was the section from the front of the jacket that had the full pocket. When I decided to make my blocks smaller, it eliminated the possibility of using it as a block. Then I realized if I trimmed my blocks down to 4.5" finished squares I could use the pocket as my backing. I used a remnant piece of batting and bound my quilt with the tie (deconstructed to only be the top layer of fabric).

In the end my mini took me about 2 1/2 hours to sew and finish. The solid blue is the jacket lining fabric. My blocks feature the tie, the cuff of one sleeve with buttons, a section of the inside where the lining met the plaid fabric, and the bottom corner edge of the jacket. The section from the interior was just cut out and used as is, and I machine appliqued the other three blocks.

Here's the back with the pocket.

I loved this section of the inner lining. The plaid edge you see was the detail on the interior breast pocket. Early on I knew I was going to use it. Mel suggested I use it for my label, but I thought I might feature it on the front before I decided to work even smaller than planned. Once I decided on the smaller size, I knew it would make a fun label. I opted to finish it and tuck it into the pocket on the back.

I'm linking up to Persimmon Dreams for the Project QUILTING Well-Dressed Man Challenge.

Voting is open over on Persimmon Dreams. You may vote for your EIGHT favorites. You can find me at #51.

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I couldn't resist the appeal of the mini swap with The Modern Quilt Guild in which we would exchange our mini quilts at QuiltCon. I was assigned Ginger as my secret partner and found inspiration in her Pinterest account. Specifically, I was drawn to the colors in this pin and loved the color wash design and spiral quilting in this one. I'm not sure how I came up with the idea to make improv tumbler blocks. It mostly started as an exercise in figuring out if I could achieve it.

I started by cutting three tumblers from each fabric as I worked through scraps and stash choosing fabrics. I aimed for about 3" tall using my cutting matt as a guide, but all of my cutting was done with a rotary cutter and no ruler. I wanted a variety of tumbler shapes, but aimed for generally 1 1/2 - 2" wide on the narrower edge and 3 - 3 1/2" wide on the wider edge. Once I'd cut a bunch of tumblers, I started fiddling with layout on my design wall and ended up with this plan.

The easiest part of the piecing was connecting the tumblers in each row. The first row I pieced (the bottom row) came out to be pretty curved (which I adjusted a bit by picking out one seam), so from then on I worked to compensate for that a bit as I pieced. It's fun to watch the project shrink up as the piecing happens.

Once my rows were complete, I decided to use smooth curves to connect the rows.

So what's a girl to do when she's up against a deadline and also needs to pack for QuiltCon? Well, naturally, she should decide to use thirteen thread colors and dozens of starts and stops to quilt her mini! Right? That's totally a sound decision, eh?

I pulled all my Aurifil (50 wt.) that was even close to a color used in the quilt. From left to right they are #2735 Medium Blue, #5018 Grass Green, #1125 Medium Teal, #2783 Medium Delft Blue, #1231 Spring Green, #2135 Yellow, #3920 Golden Glow - Variegated, #1114 Grass Green, #2810 Turquoise, #4093 Jade, #2582 Dark Violet, #1100 Red Plum, and #2588 Light Magenta. Plus I attached the binding with #2605 Grey. If I stashed different weights of thread, I totally would have thrown them in too!

Then I stitched overlapping spirals that were approximately 3" in diameter. I mostly aimed to match the thread color to the area of the fabric that I was quilting on, but of course there were some great spots where strong contrast occurred as well. Here's where I started.

And some finished views.

I went to Savannah with zero threads tied and buried and my binding was only attached to the front of my quilt. I worked on burying threads on Thursday and Friday while watching demos and sitting near outlets to charge my phone. I got to give a handful of one-on-one demos myself on how to bury threads. ;-) Friday evening after dinner, I finished the final stitching on the binding. Once a procrastinator, always a procrastinator? I like that my late night hotel photo shows the texture of the quilting so well.

And of course, I took the quilt out for a mini photo shoot before delivering it to Ginger.

 

Here are Susan, myself and Ginger. We were connected in a little loop for the swap. Susan made for me, I made for Ginger, and Ginger made for Susan. We're each holding the quilt we received. I love the beautiful mini I received from Susan. It has some lovely embroidery detail that you can't see in the picture. And I adore the striped binding!

Thanks for visiting! I'm officially on an IG swap break for the time being... but boy are they fun!

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