Sunday, January 13, 2019

Project Quilting 10.1 - Hope Springs Eternal

It is that time of year again!  Project Quilting time! Where anyone who wants to join in the fun is challenged to make a quilt in a week based on that week's theme.  Check out all the details at  Kim Lapecek's website.


The first theme for season ten is "Hope Springs Eternal".  I will admit my first thought was Star Wars related.  I kept thinking of the line, "Rebellions are built on hope," from the movie Rogue One, but no ideas came on how to make that into a quilt.


My next thought was about how living water brings hope.  Out of the darkest darkness living water can spring forth and give hope and life to things around it.  I envisioned the colors of the quilt first, with the outer edges being black and fading into blue to represent the water and then bright colors to represent flowers.

Next was to come up with a pattern.  I was going to create my own swirling vortex of water, but I couldn't come up with a swirl pattern I liked.  Who knew it would be so hard to free hand draw a swirling whirlpool.  So I decided to go a with pattern I already knew that could still convey the colors I had in my head, The swirly triangle.

Not sure if that is the real name, but I got the pattern from an Irish Folding website a long time ago and made it bigger to fit my needs.



For each shade of color I used six different fabrics except for the blue, which has seven.  I thought about making a large quilt, but by the time I picked the pattern it was halfway through the week, so I opted for a table topper and actually got to bed on time every night this week.

It measures 30 x 27 inches.

If you haven't already, make sure you check out all the other entries this week HERE and vote for your favorites.  Voting starts at 12pm Central time.  To vote click the heart in the top right corner.

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Sunday, December 30, 2018

Batik Strip N Flip Quilt

This quilt came about as I was trying to come up with an easy quilt pattern to use for the beginner quilt class I am teaching this January.  I ended up going with a single Irish Chain pattern for the quilt class so my students can learn basic block construction, but I was loving the colors in this one so I finished  it up.

It went together super fast.  I picked 32 different pre-cut 2.5 in strips from two different older Island Batik strip sets, Blue Heaven and Juicy Jewels, and sewed them all together.

After all the strips were sewn together I squared it all up and cut it into seven different smaller strips and flipped three of them.



I put sashing between each strip set and added a darker blue border.


I loved the colors so much in this one I decided to keep it for myself.



I did a pieced backing on this one.  When the quilts get so big that you have to sew two pieces together I always opt for different fabrics.  I pick one that goes the length of the quilt by the width of the fabric, then add some smaller pieces on the sides.  I have less leftovers this way.


It was mostly cloudy on the beach the during the photo shoot, but a cloudy day at the beach is still a good day in my opinion.


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