Tag Archives: challenge quilt

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Ya know how I said I was going to start early in the week for this week's challenge? Nope. Here's my Saturday quilt, finished in the wee early hours of Sunday morning.

I taught the first half of my All About Angles workshop on Tuesday. I can't teach a workshop without being inspired by my students to create another version on one of my techniques. I don't always have time to carry that out, but this week's Project QUILTING challenge was the perfect opportunity. This week's theme is Virtual Vacation. We were asked to make a project that was somehow inspired by vacation.

On my very first weekend away with my husband we went to Monterey for the weekend to celebrate my 30th birthday (thirteen years ago!). We stayed in a lovely B&B, visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and walked around Pacific Grove. This included a stop at Back Porch Fabrics where I purchased this fat quarter of fish fabric. I intended to make a mini quilt as a memento of the weekend. This challenge was the perfect opportunity to finally use the fabric, but I opted for a table runner. I cut the fat quarter in half. This determined the width of the runner. Then I pieced eight All About Angles units (one didn't make the cut) in coordinating Kona solids. They weren't all labeled, but this included Kona Papaya, Parrot, and Breakers.

The quilt is bound with a pillowcase finish and free motion quilted in 50wt Aurifil Jade (#4093). I echoed the piecing in the All About Angles panels and quilted seaweed among the fish. The runner finished at approximately 10" x 56", the perfect size for my kitchen island.

For those of you who have seen my PQ 12.1 and PQ 12.2 projects you may remember that I was using a modern traditional design for each challenge. I had to make the choice to skip modern traditional this time, because I couldn't get excited about a way to feature the large print fish and maintain a modern traditional design in a 16" mini. I hope to be back to modern traditional designs for the last three challenges this season.

Thanks for visiting! Be sure to hop over and see the many vacation quilts linked up on Kim's blog for the Virtual Vacation challenge.

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This quilt was kind of three and a half years in the making, and also less than a day. This week's one-week Project QUILTING challenge is Fussy Cut! Like the last PQ challenge I challenged myself to a modern traditional design using a traditional block as a jumping off point. The most popular response to my instagram poll indicated Churn Dash as the favorite traditional block. That made me think of one of the first quilts I ever made.

I planned to start early in the week. (Don't I always?) And then I found myself without a stitch sewn on Friday night. I had a rough plan and had selected some fabric... 3 1/2 years ago. Way back in 2017 my friend Lorinda was hosting Color Play Friday. Each week she gave us a prompt and this fabric pull is from the week of Willy Wonka. I liked it so much I could never bring myself to put the fabrics back in my stash with their color companions, instead leaving this little pile together on the shelf this whole time. When I had a bit of a design plan, I opened the cabinet to find some fussy cuttable fabric. After picking out a couple potential options I didn't really love, my eye landed on this pile. Voila!

Fussy cutting is selecting a specific part of the fabric often used to isolate a particular motif, but it can be used to feature a particular section of a design based on color or directionality of the print. It can be a very effective design element. Sometimes fussy cutting means using the unicorn. Sometimes fussy cutting means avoiding the unicorn.

So after 4pm yesterday with less than 18 hours until the deadline I cut my first pieced of fabric and sewed my first stitches. After breaks for assisting my son with cooking dinner and having dinner with my family I resumed sewing. I finished up just before midnight and stayed up even later to photograph, blog, and linkup. There are already over 170 finished projects linked up for the week. Be sure to hop over and check them out! And mark your calendar to join us for the next Project QUILTING challenge starting on January 31.

The outer edges of both of these fabrics are the on grain. I chose this angle as a means to fussy cut to feature the flowers in the HSTs. You can see the HST unit after I trimmed it to size below in the bottom left.

Since these fabrics were from my Willy Wonka fabric pull, I chose to use the brown and gold as chocolate bars with a bit of golden ticket peeking out.

I opted for a pillowcase binding and minimal echo quilting in Aurifil 50wt. Chocolate (#2360) on the chocolate bars and Dark Violet (#2582) on the background. It finished at 16" x 16" -- I've Got a Golden Ticket!

Thanks for visiting! Check out all the other fussy cutting that went on this week on Kim's Project QUILTING linkup.

I'm also linking up with my linkup, Show Me Something. ;-)

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With the start of the new year comes the start of the new Project QUILTING season. I'm hoping to participate in all six challenges this season. In 2020, I started my Improv Log Cabin Mini series with a couple of the Project QUILTING challenges. This year, just before the first challenge was announced I decided I would layer my own design challenge on top of the Project QUILTING challenge's again this year. I'll be using modern traditional design in my challenge quilts this season.

Modern Traditionalism in quilting refers to a design that is built on a traditional quilt block combined with more modern design elements. These elements can include use of bold colors and prints, improvisational piecing, minimalism, expansive negative space, and/or alternate grid work.

This week our challenge was a color challenge, Illuminating + Ultimate Gray, the 2021 Pantone Color of the Year. I love a color challenge, because you can do just about anything with it as far as the design goes. I went about picking a traditional quilt block to design off of and started selecting solids from my stash that worked with the yellow and gray theme.

I chose the card trick quilt block. I began by changing the elements of the corner of the block, instead extending the "card color" to the corners. Then I offset this quilt block in my design and extended the lines from the block into the negative space surrounding it. Finally, through the value choices of my colors, I gave the quilt a look of transparency.

My quilt finishes at 16 1/2" x 16 1/2". It has very minimal quilting, because, ya know... one-week deadline. I didn't start cutting fabric until Friday, so I didn't leave myself much time.

My quilt is labeled on my corner triangles, included for ease of hanging. First finish of the year!

Thanks for visiting, please hop over to Kim's blog to see the over 225 submissions for the Illuminating + Ultimate Gray challenge.

I'm linking up with the Pantone 2021 Artisan Challenge. I'm also linking up with my linkup, Show Me Something. ;-)