A Detour to a Finish

With various other things happening this week, I took the lonely block from the quilt I was planning to make for Project Quilting Challenge 4 and I made a 

throw pillow cover :)

 There was no way that I could get the larger project quilted in time ...

One of the things I did for this smaller project was to miter my corners. I wish I had done that on the larger project.

 I chose to quilt a modified McTavishing in the light areas of the quilt with some leaf shapes in the corners. They just seemed to be the right soft touch against

 the spiky points of the star :)

 When I finished quilting the top, I found that I had picked up a straggler - quilted right into the back is a leftover 4 patch from the Easy Street Mystery. I am SO glad that this is a pillow cover and this oops will not be a design feature seen by many people!

 I finished off the pillow by putting a buttoned back on so I can take the feather pillow form out and

wash the pillow cover.

I'm so excited that there is a finish for this challenge!!!!

A lot was accomplished!

Yesterday, I got a lot accomplished on my 

Project Quilting Challenge 4 quilt!

When I designed my challenge quilt I went to EQ - 
love it :) And I put my stars in a setting I thought I would like - though I think I will hang the quilt above my bed in a horizontal setting ...

Once I got the blocks on my design wall, I realized that three blocks were enough and I was happy to not include the sashing (more work and they didn't seem to add that much to the design).

So, the quilt top is complete -

 and I've even got some markings for quilting :)

Yes, the blue border is WAY too big, but I like that. When the border is too wide, it gives me a lot of room for squaring up after quilting and blocking and before the binding goes on.

I have pieced a back :) As you can see, I have to square it up before I start quilting!

How are your projects coming?

A Good Start on PQ Challenge 4

I'm working on Challenge 4 of Season 4 of Project Quilting; Wish Upon A Star. I had two different ideas running around in my head, one more traditional and the other an art quilt. Since the art quilt was going to be more involved and I knew I had to run children here and there this week, had a dentist appointment and hope to go sew on my BOM with the Jennings Community Church sewing group on Friday, I decided to go the traditional route.

And after I got a good start, the snow picked up and cancelled the Drama activities for the children today, so I got to stay home and accomplish something on my project!

I started off making a bunch of four patches - I know, they aren't stars, but they are part of my design. I have a few more to make to use in the setting of my blocks.

Then I cut all the pieces for my triangle in a square units.

The triangle in square units are all sewn, but it is getting on to suppertime and the Boybarian thinks he wants to eat, so I just have a few trimmed up. Below is a mock-up of the block:

This small quilt is going to be scrappy as I think it will hang on the wall in the same room as The Stars Sing and that is a scrappy quilt!

FINISHED! Challenge 3 - Trust

This piece is for Project Quilting Season 4, Challenge 3 - Annie's Vision. I started talking about my design process HERE and HERE. Today I completed the challenge by quilting and binding it.

This was a huge accomplishment as I came down with an intestinal issue this week and have not been firing on all gears.

The Next Step in the Challenge Piece

I've chosen a saying (I don't have them floating in my head, ready to use) and I've written it on my background fabric. Then the lines needed thickening as just one pass for the letters was way too wimpy when I laid the flower applique on to check the positioning.

I'll be putting it all together over the next 30 hours (homeschool is taking a lot of time out of the next two days) and then deciding on how best to quilt it!

Working on Project Quilting Challenge 3

The challenge this week is make a quilt inspired by the artwork of Annie Young - check out her blog!

I love the rich colors and the flowers :) I'm also inspired by the fact that she has words ~ poems, verses, thoughts ... with her artwork. SO my inspiration is found in the colors, flowers and words :)

Since the colors are so rich, I opened up my Batik cabinet (well, it is a BIG shelf in the cabinet) and pulled batiks that made me happy. Then I thought about flowers and decided I was most inspired by the coneflower (echinacea) which I planted last year in the only spot prepped for flowers (no pics, sorry). She does use coneflower in several of her paintings, so they must be very inspiring ;) 

At first I was going to use Ricky Tims' Caveman Quilting techniques as they are freeform enough for my vision, but then decided to go the route of snippet style applique.

I put some fusible web on the backs of the fabrics I chose for the petals and cut them up into petal shapes. NOTE: when using this technique remember to remove the paper backing BEFORE cutting all those little pieces!!!! Removing the paper backing from lots of those thin strips was NOT fun!

Then I started layering the petals on parchment paper as I don't want to commit them to my background fabric quite yet. I want to make sure the words work first!

I continued to layer the petals as I made them way too thin and the big centers really dwarfed the wimpy petals!

While I love the fabric I chose for the centers of the flowers, they were way too chunky and (in real life, not camera life) looked like black holes on my flowers. I had to come up with another solution.

Princess Sunshine suggested a halo effect around the centers as you kind of see that in echinacea flowers and I think she is right, so I ironed them down in the center of my flowers :)

I did use another layer of parchment paper over the petals and centers before I ironed them, just in case I had a petal turned the wrong way (I didn't, thankfullly) to avoid getting fusible on my iron. This is just a great suggestion any time you use fusible web - put parchment paper (or equivalent) over your pieces :)

Now to work on a saying for this little quilt!

Design Wall Monday

nothing new on my design wall this week :(

I'm still waiting for this to tell me how it wants to be quilted:

I just didn't get much accomplished this week in the Sewing Dungeon.

We did get a science experiment done this past week - thankfully we had enough of the materials available to get it done :)

I don't enjoy having to go out to purchase obscure things for science experiments ... especially when the roads are a bit slick with snow/ice crud!

For some more design wall inspiration visit Patchwork Times!