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 10^th 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!

January 2019 Project QUILTING Plan B