"Chickadees" for a quick finish!

Challenge 11.4 was announced for week four of Project Quilting and I thought I had a great plan...

...when I realized I needed one more fabric at minimum and a LOT more than a week. This project is being saved for another day because now it has direction due to the Birds in the Air block. 

Back to the drawing board. I wanted to stick with making the block because if you make one, you truly have the makings for two. Now to decide if I want a mini, mugrug, or something else? Looking at my stash, I found the perfect fabrics for a pair of bird themed mugrugs and got to work. 

I got all my fabrics starched and cut.

Then I worked on the very quick and easy assembly of each block.

Next was sandwiching for a simple stich-in-the-ditch quilting.

Finally, I trimmed, squared and added the binding for final touches. 

While I love these, this fabric was always gotten with the intent to make something as a gift for a certain someone in my life. There is plenty of fabric left to make more variations for a set of mugrugs to be made and sent as that gift I always intended. Win-win!

These mugrugs are called "Chickadees", made in Arlington, WI, and measure 6 1/2" × 6 1/2" each. I am looking forward to playing with this block more in the future. Thanks for the wonderful challenge Kim & Trisha!

As always, keep quilting!

Fawn

"Scattered Heart" for PQ Challenge 11 week 3!

Scattered Heart

This week's challenge for Project Quilting is "Put a Heart on It". So many ideas absolutely overwhelmed me from this theme that I almost walked away from the challenge for the week. It was important to get through my work week, and then see where my mind and creative flow would take me. Early Saturday brought part of a plan for something too large to complete in the time left. I decided to sleep on it (day sleeper because I work 3rd shift) and come back to it Saturday night.

I dug out my bags of small scraps...

...and started making fabric.

I cut my new fabric into 1 1/2" strips making sure to get a variety of colors. Then I grabbed what I call my bag of "shade" scraps to decide what will be the background, binding and backing for this project. A glittery white was chosen for the background and binding. Blacks and dark greys were chosen for the backing.

After some fun piecing, the top was ready for my newest mugrug.

I love the scrappy look with those 1" strips!! The glitter on the white is pretty great, too. 

Now it's time to sandwich the layers, quilt, and bind. When doing small projects like this (it will finish at 8"×8"), I will use up small pieces of batting. It is a great opportunity to reduce my waste, so I will save pieces as small as 3"×7" and combine them with other small pieces to get the size I need. Due to using them in mugrugs, I slightly overlap and also make sure that I am quilting the project enough in all the right directions to keep it all in place. After quilting, I trim everything up and put on the binding. 

Say hello to "Scattered Heart"! I am naming it this after such a scattered week of ideas to get this fun finish. 

First we have the top:

And the back:

"Scattered Heart" finishes at 8"×8" and was created in Arlington, WI for Project Quilting Season 11, Week 3 - Put a Heart on It.

As always, keep quilting!

Fawn

New Month, New Block Color

February is off to a wonderful start. If you haven't been sewing along with Jen's 2020 Monthly Color Challenge, now is a great time to start! You will see me blogging about this challenge throughout the year. These first few months will be as a participant like everyone else. Later in the year I will be a host blogger. Yay! 

This post is all about catching up on January's block, as well as completing February's. I have chosen to make all my blocks for this year's challenge using batiks. This made choosing fabrics fun and challenging. I was looking to stay within my stash as much as possible. That was accomplished with January's block (goldfinch inspired)...

and February's block (indigo bunting inspired).

I enjoyed making both blocks. So easy and so fun! Jen always has great tips in her posts for the blocks, so head to the link above and join us if you feel inspired.

As always, keep quilting!

Fawn

PQ Mystery Quilt Along "almost" finish

This years Project Quilting Mystery Quilt Along started and I didn't know what to expect. It started out innocent enough, but as the clues came it was clear that the project would not be small. Due to other quilty obligations, I knew that this was one project that would be completed late. Completed it would be because I also had a plan to combine it with last year's mystery quilt to make one quilt big enough for donating yet another to Project Linus, Madison Chapter by the end of the year. 

Here is this year's PQ Mystery quilt top:

Those spools on that shelf are quite wide! I will need to do a bit of filling in around last years top to get the width. It will be fun picking the fabric as I used all the background fabric I had for the spools. I thought it would be fantastic to make a throw-sized quilt from both projects while putting everything "PQ" together. Sew much fun! 

Here is the first mystery top:

If you participated in either year of Kim Lapacek's Project Mystery Quilt Along leave a comment on what you did with your top. Table runner, lap warmer, pillow, or still undecided? I would love to hear from you.

As always, keep quilting!

Fawn

Team "Zebra"

Challenge #2 Complete!

The theme for week two of Project Quilting is Team Colors. There was a lot of speculation that there would be many projects made based on "sportsball". I am amused by this term as I do have plenty of inspiration to draw from with professional teams I follow to sports teams my children have played for, but I chose to go a different route for my team color theme. 

The team colors I created for are a combination of Ehler's Danlos Syndrome (EDS - zebra stripes), chronic migraine (purple and red), and scoliosis (green). All these colors and more are important in my life, but the zebra stripes takes precedence due the EDS being the leading health factor I need to monitor. It affects every aspect of my life because it is a genetic condition that affects various areas of connective tissues in my body. Every case of EDS is unique, and does not simply amount to stretchy skin - as a google search would lead one to believe. In fact, most medical professionals are not even properly trained to recognize, let alone care for, EDS patients. We are constantly trying to bring awareness to what our lives truly look like and still live our best life. 

Back to the project, after choosing my colors and fabrics, I drew up the plan for a mugrug and decided on applique for this project. The added bonus - I was able to complete two mugrugs. Yay!

Adding the fusible for piecing to make the zebra stripes was easy. I stitched it down with a narrow zigzag stitch.

The other colors were used for binding. A fun quilty friend sent me the fabric used for the backing. Just perfect for this project, don't you think?

Each mugrug finishes at 6 1/2" × 8 1/2". They were created in Arlington, WI. I call the mugrugs "Team Zebra".

Keep quilting!

Fawn 

"Ice Cream on the Nines"

Challenge #1 Complete!

This weekend I was able to make my quilt for the first challenge of Kim Lapacek's Project Quilting Season 11 with the theme being Notably Numeric. To meet the challenge theme, I stuck with creating nine patch blocks for ease. No two blocks are identical.

It was so wonderful to complete the first challenge quilt after such a trying week with my health. I call this "Ice Cream on the Nines". It is a baby quilt measuring 42"×42" made with various fabrics I picked up while attending The Great Wisconsin Quilt Show with my mom. Pineapple Fabrics had a both where I found six of the fabrics used in this quilt, including the fun ice cream print, as well as food truck print that also has ice cream trucks!! So cute!! 

I started with deciding which fabrics from my stash were going to be used for the other three blocks in each nine patch.

Then starched all the fabrics and got right to cutting the 216 squares I needed at two and a half inches square each. 

Then came careful assembly as to not repeat any pattern within a full block. 

Next was assembling the rows. Finally, those rows got to be seen together in the final top. After some final pressing, it was time to sandwich and baste. Here is where I got to add that wonderful Kaffe polka dot backing. Binding was still up in the air at this point. 

How did I decide quilting? It needed simple. There was enough happening with this quilt between the fabrics, block pattern, and backing. The last thing it needed was a complicated quilting. Simple, full-quilt diagonals is all it needed through each line of blocks. I took a narrow zigzag stitch to the edge to close and it was ready for binding. 

I fully machine bind my quilts. My hands do not handle needlework, so I have to find ways to make it work. It has been an interesting number of years of "yikes!" results and most recently, coming into my own on binding success. This quilt was definitely worth celebrating. I have to thank Elizabeth Chappell of Quilters Candy for this video with the tip that helped me get my binding to behave in a way better than even clips can accomplish! The mitered corners were also so beautiful. Usually one is wonky in some way. Not today. Take a look -

I hope you have enjoyed my entry for week one of Project Quilting Season 11 - Notably Numeric. Created in Arlington, WI.

Check out my Instagram if you want to see quick updates on happenings in my quilty world. Thank you for checking out the process of my first challenge quilt. Leave a comment and let me know you stopped by.

As always, keep quilting!

Fawn

Happy New Year...a week late!!

The start to 2020 has been a tad busy catching up on some projects from 2019, meeting a secret sewing deadline, and getting into the groove of everything January 2020 in the quilty world I have chosen to put under my needle.

Let's start with this post about wrapping up the blocks for the 2019 Monthly Color Challenge from Patterns By Jen - November and December are complete!

I have decided to donate these quilts each year to the local chapter of the Linus Project. I was struggling with the size and variety of colors in my 2018 blocks when all were put together when attempting to complete things as one coherent quilt. So I started researching different charities I could donate my quilts to with Project Linus feeling like the perfect fit. By the end of the year, there will be four quilts completed.

The top photo shows my 6" and 12" blocks from the 2018 Monthly Color Challenge. All blocks followed the color theme for the month, but not necessarily the pattern. Jen posted blocks in both sizes that year. I challenged myself to keep with the colors and create a block in both sizes each month. Extra block patterns were chosen from a book my mother passed down to me. I chose blocks I hadn't before created. One of the blocks Jen posted that year (May, I think) I also changed up the layout on as it looked better with the fabrics I purchased specifically for that block). The bottom photo shows all of the 2019 blocks together. My personal challenge with those blocks was to create blocks from only solid fabrics. I absolutely love these blocks and do not know why I avoided solids in my earliest quilting. Crazy! 

What do you have planned for your Monthly Color Challenge quilts? Will they be gifts, donations, quilts for your couch, or maybe donated to a fundraiser? Let me know in the comments. It's always fun to share ideas on what we do with our creations!

In my next post, we will start looking at some of the new sewing I have started in 2020, as well as what is to come in the remainder of this week! Short time frame, so what could it be?? The suspense!!

PS - When you hop over to Jen's blog, check out the 2020 Monthly Color Challenge! It's definitely not for the birds, but all about the birds...and their beautiful colors that they inspired for each challenge month. From there, check out the fellow bloggers who are creating blocks for various months throughout the year. All the fun starts at Pattern's By Jen blog!

Keep quilting!!

Fawn