Project QUILTING
It’s been a
really long time since I have posted anything on the blog. Once my Scrap Addicts assignment was over,
and I quit doing blog hops, there just didn’t seem to be a good enough reason. Until now.
Somewhere in
the rabbit hole that is the internet, I ran across a quilt challenge called
Project Quilting. You’ve heard of Project Runway, right? Well, this is similar, except Heidi Klum and
Tim Gunn aren’t involved. And it’s for
quilting projects, not clothing. And
it’s online instead of on TV. And no one
gets voted off. And no one gets a spread in Marie Clare magazine or their
clothes featured at Nordstrom. OK, OK, so it’s not really THAT much like
Project Runway, but it is a challenge, and there are prizes!
Project
QUILTING is the brainchild of Kim Lapacek, and she manages it on her blog,
Persimon Dreams: https://kimlapacek.com/project-quilting.
Clicking on the link will take you to the page which describes the rules and
prizes, etc.
There are
also some fun links with titles like “10 Reasons why to try Project QUILTING”
and “10 Reasons why Project QUILTING is better than Project Runway”. I also discovered that this is the 10th
year, and there are links to all the posts from the previous years. How did I never hear of this before?
This whole
thing seemed like a great way to kick-start my quilting, which has kind of
languished lately. It seems like a lot
of fun, and did I mention that there are prizes?
The first
challenge that I am doing is the Red, White and Blue challenge, which runs from
January 20 – January 27. Why
red/white/blue in January? I really
don’t know, but what the heck, right? I
decided that I need a new table runner for the coffee table in my living room. I have themed ones for Christmas, Fall and
Valentine’s Day, plus one that I use the rest of the year. So I thought that my first Project Quilting
challenge would be a patriotic table runner that I would use for 4th of July.
I grabbed my
bin of patriotic fabrics that were leftover from when I made the Red/White/Blue Stars
quilt for the 2015 Knights of Columbus International Convention and started
looking for ideas. (If you want to see
that quilt, I’ve got a picture posted here: http://myquiltymusings.blogspot.com/2015/07/its-done.html)
I’ve got a bookshelf
full of books that I troll through for inspiration, so I turned there
first. ‘Endless Stars – Strip Pieced
Quilts that Sparkle” by Jean M. Potetz jumped out at me. I’ve had the book for quite a few years, but
have never made anything using the technique she developed.
So, thinking
that I had all sorts of time, I starting cutting strips and sewing them together. I realized that I didn’t have enough of the
white background fabric, so I started digging through my scraps to see if I had
any of it in my strips bin. Nope. And I didn't want to start over.
OK - plan
B. I could use another white on white
fabric and arrange it strategically so that it wouldn’t be obvious. Good, but not great. Moving on….
I realized
that I also didn’t have enough of the red…. Grab another coordinating red, but
how to arrange it? I wasted an evening drawing out several options, then showed
the drawings to my husband. He couldn’t
tell the difference between the designs because the two red colored pencils
that I used were too close in value. So
I decided to just use the new red for the middle stars and leave the older one
along the edges.
By this
time, it is late on Friday evening and the projects need to be done and posted
by Sunday at 1 p.m. Why did I think that I had all sorts of time?
Realizing
that I am going to be way too stressed out if I keep to my original project
plan, I reluctantly put it aside. It
will be finished, but not by Sunday. I
still want to participate, but there just won’t be enough time to do the table
runner justice. Plus, I need time to
remember how to post things on the blog and how to link things. So a smaller, simpler project is going to be
necessary if I want to get it done.
While I was
cutting out the blocks, I realized that there was quite a bit of waste with the
technique. You stitch fabric strips
together and then cut out squares on an angle.
The cut off scraps are shaped like long right triangles. I am never one to throw away any usable scrap, so I saved them. When I realized
that the original design wasn’t going to work, I grabbed the cut-off triangles
and started playing. Sewing the
hypotenuse of two different colored scrap triangles together made rectangles, which are
a lot more usable to me than the triangles.
The only problem is the rectangles end up being only about 1 ½ x 3 ½
inches, and rather wonky. That’s pretty small, but I thought that I could do
something with them. I sewed them
together in two rows of six each, then sewed the two rows together. Add some batting, a backing and some
stitching and voila! A small mug rug!
There are no size restrictions for the projects, thank goodness. It’s a lot less than what I had originally
planned to submit, but, hey, it’s DONE! And
with a few hours to spare!
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| January 2019 Project QUILTING Plan B |
