Guild Challenge

My quilt guild has a challenge for us ... and I've had an idea rattling around in my head for months. I've been gathering photos for inspiration, found just the right words to add, looked for the embellishments ... and procrastinated.

The challenge pieces are due next Monday. So TODAY I started sewing ...

The challenge is to make a 35" square quilt with a minimum of 5 jewels on it. The theme is Shoes.

I wanted to do Combat Boots. So I have took a picture and analyzed it for shadows and made the picture big :) Then I used the techniques from Vicki Pignatelli's Quilting Curves book to draw up my pattern. I didn't dig out the book, so I had to work from memory and thus did some backtracking a time or two.

Here I have one boot sewn and then next one plotted out. I don't have all of the marking done on boot two, but you can get an idea of where I am going from the picture :)

 

The "fun" part of this quilt was the lacing system. I was unable to find the right stuff to make authentic looking quick lace and eyelets. I had a choice of shiny gold or shiny silver eyelets. I chose the silver ones as they were less obnoxious than the gold ones. 

The longest part of getting these boots done was preparing the pieces for the eyelets. Cutting the tiny little holes for the eyelets to go through with little scissors was time consuming (is there an easier way? If so, let me know in the comments!).

The second boot is in process. I use a lot of pins to hold those curves in place :) I don't want them to shift while I am sewing them!

Here are the finished boots - well, there are some more things that need doing, but the basic boots are now finished. I will work on getting them ready to applique on the quilt and they will get laces after the quilt is quilted (authentic laces right from the Army Guy's old boots!).

I'll try to remember to take more process photos as I work on other steps this week.