Tag Archives: challenge quilt

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It's been a busy week of sewing. Curves and Swoon blocks and Project QUILTING, oh my! I mentioned this week's Project QUILTING challenge to my daughter and she made a quilt for the challenge, too! I'm so proud of her and really enjoyed her excitement. This week's challenge was to make a quilt with only red, white, and blue (though we didn't have to use all three). I love the fairly open ended theme and endless possibilities. Early on I decided that I would limit to blue and white since I don't have much in the way of red fabric. I've admired these temperature quilt blocks by Cheri and decided on some improv triangles for this challenge. I chose a dark blue solid for the main portion of the blocks and was able to cut sixteen 4" squares from my scrap of fabric. Of the two coordinating prints I chose, I was most limited on the crosshatch, so those were cut into small strips. The units went together quickly. My initial plan was to use a straight set layout with all blocks in the same direction like this first photo. Then I played with potential layouts and decided I'd go with the fourth one.

In piecing my rows together two rows got switched and I didn't realize it until I was done with the quilt top. With the other deadlines this week I decided I didn't have time to unsew and I would just stick with the happy accident that happened when I swapped rows 3 and 4. I went simple with the quilting by using Aurifil 50wt Medium Delft Blue (#2783) for diagonal walking foot quilting. My final design decision was to bind in solid Kona Red. My daughter and I both used this fabric for our binding, so that saved me some time by making it all at once. The quilt was machine bound with Aurifil 50wt Red (#2250). Since I pieced with Aurifil 50wt White (#2024), I not only used red, white, and blue fabric for this quilt, but also red, white, and blue thread as well!

The quilt finished at approximately 15" x 15".

I'm linking up to Project QUILTING 10.2. Voting is open! You can vote for your ten favorites. Mine is #74 and my daughter's submission is #72.

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I’m R. I’m six years old. I live in San Jose, and my quilt is called Mixed Up Signs. I got the idea from an old kids’ book called Mr. Pine’s Mixed Up Signs.

My quilt has four arrows pointing in all different directions. One block (top left) is themed “England," one (bottom right) is “Dots," one (bottom left) is “Outdoors," and one (top right) is “Random.” The white in my blocks are white-on-white. And my thread number is #2735 (Aurifil 50wt). The thread color is Medium Blue.

The reason I made arrows is that my Mom was making half-square triangles, and I told her that they looked like half an arrow. And she said, “How would you make an arrow?” And I said that I would write it down. So I did.

And we started making them. But first she said that there was a challenge, and I asked, "what is the challenge?" She said it was only red, white, and blue fabrics. And I said I wanted to do that challenge with arrows.

A couple days later, after we started making them, she said “So, you want your arrows to be facing all different directions?” I said, “No, I wasn’t thinking that, but I might actually do that.” Then a couple days after that, I said to myself, “I’m going to do different facing arrows like Mr. Pine’s Mixed Up Signs!”

I learned that I can make arrows, and that books can inspire you.

 

Mixed Up Signs
designed, pieced, quilted, and bound by R, age 6 1/2
with cutting, pressing, and supervision help from mom
12.5" x 12.5"

Linked up to Project QUILTING 10.2. R's quilt is #72 in the linkup. And my submission is #74. Voting is open! You can vote for your ten favorites.

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Last Sunday was the beginning of season 10 of Project QUILTING, a series of one-week quilt challenges. I've participated for the past two years and this year I'm a sponsor. The theme for this week's challenge is Hope Springs Eternal. Well... I was out of town for the first 4 days of the one week challenge, and then I had to spend Thursday and Friday making serious progress on a quilt deadline that I'll be posting on my blog tonight. This means I didn't even have time to think too much about this challenge until yesterday.

I had a hard time with this theme. In the end, with 14 hours until the deadline (including overnight... and I needed to sleep) I had hope I could crank out a small quilt. How's that for hope springing eternal? My initial goal was a mug rug, then I decided on placemat sized, and in the end I trimmed it to 18.5" x 18.5". I'll be linking up with less than 15 minutes to spare.

I used a lovely piece of hand dyed fabric from my friend Mel Beach and my Planned Improv: All About Angles technique. After demoing my technique on Wednesday (7 times!) I'm excited to work on some All About Angles projects.

I used two sizes of Aurifil Light Leaf Green (#1147) for this quilt. It was pieced and bound with Aurifil 50wt and quilted with Auriful 80wt. I hadn't used 80wt and really love the fine line it creates. It's certainly quilting that's all about the texture and not the color. I chose a fast motif from my recent class with Christa Watson. It's way fancier than a basic meander, but not much more difficult.

Here's the basic breakdown of how I made the quilt start to finish in under 14 hours.

Saturday
8pm - pull fabric
8:50pm - cut fabric
9:07pm - start sewing
10:50pm - bedtime

Sunday
5:45am - back at the machine
6:20am - finished quilt top 
7am - quilting begins
7:45am - done quilting
8:40 - binding going on
9:25am - photos, then blog post
9:48am - linkup

Congratulations to everyone who finished the challenge! View them all at the Project QUILTING 10.1 linkup. Voting is open, so click over to check out the 124 submissions and vote for your 10 favorites.

 

I've linked up to Needle and Thread Thursday.