challenge reveal

Oh dear, here we go again...Katie hasn't been blogging in forever and now she's back to apologize...

But I come with photos and a reveal!

You may remember a while back when I told you of a paint chip challenge with my guild?

I shared with you my fabrics:

But because it was supposed to be secret, I couldn't share more.  I wondered if even this was too much?

My guild had a retreat at the beginning of August and I didn't get my act together to get my money turned in, so I didn't end up going.  (The gal organizing things assured me she'd fit me in last-minute, but I didn't want to be THAT person, so I declined her offer to fix it for me.  I'm a big girl.  I'm okay with accepting my own errors.)  I stayed home and sewed the entire top for my challenge that weekend instead.  Before you're too awed, it's not that big...about 27" square.  But here are some in-progress and reveal photos!

Messy fabrics when cutting for paper piecing!  (What is missing is my very helpful black cat, Luka, laying in the middle of this and me having to move him for every single piece - because every piece was cut individually as I needed it.)

Paper piecing and trimming

All the parts - it took forever to decide which section to put where to keep the same fabrics apart from each other.  You'd think with 7 different fabrics this wouldn't be hard, but you'd be wrong!

Reverse applique to get the circle into the back.  Draw the circle and take a deep breath because there's not enough extra of this fabric to do it again!

Pin like mad to make sure it stays where it should!

That didn't take so long to sew in there.  Thank goodness I'm experienced with applique, or this would have been even scarier and harder.  It wasn't too bad after all and the hole was just right!

I pieced strips of the leftover fabrics from the front to make the back.

I also scanned the instructions, printed them on fabric and set that into the quilt back.  Now everyone for the rest of eternity who sees this quilt will know the whole story!

And outside today for a little photo shoot.  I had one without the dappled sunlight, but I like this one better.  (I just wish it hadn't been folded for a few weeks and gained some wrinkles already!)

And the back so you can see the quilting and that my label doubles as a pocket for the actual paint chip.  Me and that circle template didn't do so well, but we got better the more circles I made.  I'm still not so good with the templates on my longarm, but better than I was before I quilted this project!

Now for the pattern details...

A while back, I'd seen a gal making these gemstones on her blog.  Her use of printed calicoes with this pattern just didn't strike me, but I did remember the pattern!  When I was hunting around the internet for inspiration for this project, I remembered this one and knew solids would be absolutely perfect for both the pattern and my challenge.

The pattern?  It's called "Birthstone Block: Round Cut" and the designer, Sarah at {no} hats in the house, had a link to the pattern on her blog.  Easy, right?

Nope.

The pattern is not on her etsy or craftsy store.  What to do?  E-mail Sarah, of course, asking how to purchase said pattern.

Turns out it's in rewrite, so not available in her stores, but I was able to get a copy anyways!!!!!  Yay Sarah!  You rock!

Whew!

So I procrastinated a while and then finally sewed it all up in one weekend.  Then procrastinated some more and quilted it in about an hour.  So, as you may have guessed, the pattern was much simpler than anticipated (even for the dreaded paper piecing kind of sewing) and the quilting was just me getting my behind in gear.  Having a deadline always helps!

I made it in time for the guild challenge reveal, the first Thursday in October.  We had 32 people take paint chips and 23 projects turned in.  Not all were finished quilts.  Some were just tops, but there was a stuffed turtle made out of hexagons, a really cute tote bag and a fabric box to name a few non-quilt entries.  It was super fun to see all the entries and hear the stories from members about their quilt.  I think at least 5 people said they HATED their colors (what do people have against yellow?) and a few commented how hard it was to match their paint chip colors, but I think the challenge did us all a lot of good to stretch our imaginations.

I didn't win, but that's okay.  I like my quilt and that's all that matters.

But I won't be making any more of these blocks, thankyouverymuch.

Other than this, I've been doing some quilting on and off.  I seem to go in spurts and it's often motivated by things needing to be done.  I have a quilt finished, waiting to be turned in for a charity silent auction that will be held in a few weeks.  I'll get a photo of that soon - before I give it away for sure - and share.  

I'm also slowly getting the binding sewn on to my purple and grey quilt.  Since it's for me it gets put on the back burner a lot.  And I'm a little afraid to use it because Emma - I love her so much - gets upset and coughs and then throws frequently.  Like in the middle of the night when you won't wake up and feed her/pet her/let her under the covers/roll over and give her your warm spot/make the other cat move so she can have his warm spot...so I'm a little scared this will be "initiated" on it's inaugural night...

And last week my guild had a UFO auction.  The first one I went to, about 4 years ago, there were a lot of actual unfinished projects and cool stuff and a lot of money was raised (which we've used to purchase stuff to make our quilt show better).  But folks have gotten the idea that having more, close together, is a great idea.  Not so much because all the good UFOs are gone now and we're digging deeper and deeper into our closets for stuff to donate.  So what is donated is now stuff like bags of old scraps, hand quilting frames (the small, plastic variety) and yards of lace.

But I did come home with a bag of scraps!

This was donated by a lady who makes doll clothes, so the scraps are a little wonky in shape and not all 100% cotton.  But my plans for these don't matter!

Doll quilts!

These were all made (the one on the far right isn't done yet) this weekend.  The two on the left and one on the right all use some of the bag of scraps, but I've supplemented with my stash.  The other two (with half-square triangles) are all my scraps - in digging through my stash, I found these "squirrels" and added them to the pile.  They're all 12"-18" on a side, but not all are square.  I still have to quilt and bind them, but I'll get them done.  Hopefully in time to donate to the fire department for their annual Christmas toy giveaway for needy kids - one gal coordinates dolls, quilts and outfits to be donated for the cause and my guild helps with the quilt portion.  And those little girls are not going to mind if there's a poly-blend fabric in there.  In fact, it might wear better!

I have a few more in mind and the bag of scraps isn't diminishing much, but at least I FEEL like sewing lately, so I'm going to hang onto that with small projects that give me a more instant gratification.  And I'll get back to the bigger stuff eventually.

Now I'm off to comment on all the blog posts I read last night on my phone (that likes to make all words proper nouns if it's not a text and drives me bananas).

Happy quilting!
Katie

PS  If you're not sure what a "squirrel" is, this video says it all: