Tag Archives: SAQA donation

This week's Project QUILTING challenge is Birthstone. We were required to use the color of our birthstone. The stone for October is tourmaline. A quick internet search indicated that tourmaline can come in a variety of colors, not just the light pink we usually see in birthstone charts. I was particularly drawn to the watermelon tourmaline, which includes pink. With a Creating a Scrappy Slab lecture/demo last week for Silicon Valley MQG and another coming up tomorrow night for The Northwest Arkansas MQG I had scrappy slab on the mind.

I pulled out my pink, green and black and white scrap bins and set to pull out scraps in light and medium pink and light and dark green to start building some scrappy slab tourmaline.

I worked organically and eventually decided to build two quadrants of the stone and to raw edge appliqué it to a scrappy slab quilted background in white on black. My quilt finished at 6" x 8"

I am donating this piece to the SAQA Spotlight Auction 2025. The fundraiser auction coincides with the 2025 SAQA Conference, but you do not to be attending the SAQA conference or a member of SAQA. Bidding will be open to everyone via the Handbid platform March 26 to April 5. Today was the last day for SAQA members to complete the online submission form for donating artwork to the auction. Glad I got mine done just in time!

The SAQA Spotlight Auction mats each art quilt, so the viewable portion of the quilt is 4 1/2" x 6 1/2".

I'm linking up on Kim's blog for the Project QUILTING Birthstone challenge.

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My passion is planned improv piecing. I enjoy giving myself a set of rules to follow (or break!) as create.

While demoing my technique in my All About Angles classes, I always cut up some fabric to show how I create my starting pieces. Sometimes these are part of a work in progress, but sometimes I just start with a new pile of fabric I'm excited to work with. In this case it was the latter. I started with five Alison Glass Kaleidoscope solids: Tomato, Sunflower, Raisin, Cherry, Goldenrod.

I was drawn to this autumn palette. As I put together my improv piecing, I was reminded of the changing colors of the Fall season. I find labeling the selvage edge of my solid fabrics with a sharpie to be a helpful way to remember which color is which. In this case "AG" is for Alison Glass.

I opted for a variety of weights and colors of thread for walking foot quilting echoing my piecing lines, Aurifil 12wt Paprika (#2270), 40wt Brass (#2975), 50wt Yellow (#2135), and 12wt Burgundy (#1103).

I finished the quilt with a faced binding and a mini sleeve. (Label coming soon!)

Fractured is 12" x 12". It is my first SAQA donation piece, for this year's SAQA Benefit Auction, which will take place September 10 through October 3. Be sure you are subscribed to my newsletter if you'd like to be reminded of the auction in September. If you'd like to have me visit your guild or group to teach my All About Angles piecing technique (or one of my other workshops), please send your program chair to my Teaching page.

Thanks for visiting!