Tag Archives: challenge quilt

Project QUILTING 10.5: Abecedarius • 14 Comments

sarah • March 9, 2019

After a two week hiatus, I managed to crank out a *very tiny* finish for this week's Project QUILTING challenge. I took my word of the year and turned it into a quilt. Mostly my technique was slice and insert and it was all a bit of planned improv, I wanted skinny lines and to make all the letters about the same height as the E which I finished first.

The strips finish at about 1/8" wide and the quilt finished at 2 1/4" x 9". It ties my Patchwork City mini mini quilt for the smallest quilt I've ever made. Fabrics are Alison Glass Kaleidoscope: Iris, Opal, Aqua Marine, Dragonfly, Beetle, and Peacock. It was pieced with Aurifil 50wt White (#2024) and quilted with Aurifil 50wt Medium Grey (#1158). I quilted it by walking foot echoing the letters, then I pillowcase bound it. By the way, my daughter wasn't very impressed. She told me, "It's hardly a quilt. It doesn't even have binding!" Here are a few process pictures to go with my finished photo above.

I'm linking up to the Project QUILTING 10.5 challenge. Voting will be open soon. You can pop over and vote for your ten favorites. (Mine is #70.)

Project QUILTING 10.2: Red, White, and Blue • 10 Comments

sarah • January 27, 2019

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.

Project QUILTING 10.2: Red, White, and Blue (Made by My Daughter) • 22 Comments

sarah • January 26, 2019

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!”