Project Quilting 11.2 - Team Colors

When I saw the theme for the second Project Quilting challenge, there was no doubt in my mind as to what colors I was going to use.  

I was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, so I bleed black and gold! We are fortunate to have a long history with great major league sports teams here in the Burgh, and all of them use black and gold as their team colors. 

As an aside - A lot of people misspell Pittsburgh because there are not very many places that have maintained the Scottish spelling with the ‘h’ rather than the German spelling (without the ‘h’, as in burg).  There is a long and complicated history behind the name. I won’t bore you with all the details, but if the topic piques your interest, you can look up here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_of_Pittsburgh 

OK, back to the main topic – Team Colors.  The NFL Pittsburgh Steelers, the NHL Pittsburgh Penguins, and the MLB Pittsburgh Pirates all use black and gold as their team color.  My high school’s colors were also black and gold.  The University of Pittsburgh’s colors are black and gold.  I’m not an alumnus, but two of my children have degrees from that institution, so I am going to count them as one of 'my' black and gold teams.   As far as I know, we are the only city whose major sports teams all use the same colors.  The reason is that black and gold are the colors of Pittsburgh's flag, which in turn, is based on the coat of arms of William Pitt, the 18th century British prime minister for whom the city is named.
   

So my project for this challenge had to be black and gold.  The real dilemma was what was I going to make, and what fabric was I going to use?  I have some fabric that features the major Pittsburgh landmarks, and I considered using that. It was commissioned the owner of a local quilt store.  The issue is that it was a limited run, and is no longer available.  If I run out, I won’t be able to get any more.  So it went back into the ‘save it for another project’ bin. 

Then I remembered that I had some Steelers fabric left over from a project that I made for someone. That's a long story that I won't go into here ^.^!  I’m not a big fan of the officially licensed NFL fabrics, because they tend to be kind of stiff.  But I hated to throw it away because you never know, someone might ask me to make something with it again. 

 

I dug in my bin of “not quilt quality’ fabrics and unearthed not only some of the black, but also a handful of 4 ½ inch squares of the white.

   

 That decided the issue.  I was going to make ‘something’ that used 4 ½ inch squares.

My husband suggested a table runner that we could put out during football season, and I thought that was a reasonable suggestion. 

After playing around with the squares on my design wall for a few days, I decided to use a “trip around the world’ layout, because I had exactly enough of the white 4 ½ inch squares for that.  The problem was that I didn’t have enough to fill in the sides to make it either a square or a rectangle.  So rather than filling in with other fabrics, I just kept the central motif and sewed it to some backing fabric, envelope style.  A little stitching around the center and around the edges and voila!  A Steeler table topper for my dining room table!

It's Year 11 for Project Quilting!

For those of you who aren't familiar with Project Quilting, it is a challenge that has been run by Kim Lapacek for the last 10 years.  The idea is to make a project that meets the given criteria in one week’s time. Yep, one week!  From inception to completion, you have 7 days.  Some people do whole quilts, some do wall hangings, pot holders, mug rugs, etc.  Size isn’t important; the finished project is.  The project needs to fit with the weekly theme and has to meet the guidelines given by Kim: “Your project does not need to be a traditional quilt, but must meet at least one of these requirements: include patchwork, include appliqué, have 3 layers stitched together by hand or machine.”

There are 6 separate weekly challenges, and each has a different theme.

I won’t go into all the details here, but if you want more information, follow this link: https://kimlapacek.com/project-quilting

The thing I like the most about Project Quilting (besides the prizes, of course ^.^) is the fact that it happens at the beginning of the year, after all the hustle and bustle of the holidays.  It helps to brighten up those dark cold days of winter. 

This is my second year of participating, and I only wish that I had found out about it earlier.  I really enjoy the creative challenge that it presents.  You can read about my participation in last years’ event by looking at my earlier blog posts.  Don’t worry, they will be easy to find, since I haven’t blogged since the last challenge of PQ 10.  Yeah, I know.  My bad….

This year’s first challenge (a.k.a. PQ 11.1) is Notably Numeric.  The project has to 'feature numbers, counting, or mathematics in its theme or implementation.'

I only had a couple of days to get this first challenge done because the normal weekly activities are starting up now that the holidays are over. I also had to get the Christmas decorations down and put away, since we have some work being done on the house today (Wednesday) and the tree was in the way. So yesterday was spent getting everything Christmas-y back in the boxes and putting them back in the attic. On top of that, it just so happened that last weekend and this coming one are work trips for my husband, and I am traveling with him.  We left Thursday and came back Sunday evening last week, and the same schedule holds for this week.  That basically left one day for me to figure out what I wanted to do and to get it done. 

Because of those time constraints, I decided that I was going to have to make a small project.  I wanted something that would be useful, so I settled on a potholder.  My potholders are getting kind of grungy and worn. Washing them didn’t do much to change that, so a potholder it is!

What I really wanted to do was make a spidron quilt, but realized that 1.)  I would not have enough time to do it justice, and 2.) One with reasonably sized pieces would end up way to big to be a potholder!  I learned about spidrons from Cindy McCoy, who is the founder of The Quilt Pattern Magazine.  She used to have a website called Quilt Campus, and that is where I first learned about these complex mathematical shapes. She also published a pattern called Dragon Tails in the February 2013 issue of the Quilt Pattern Magazine which used the concept.

  

The word spidron was coined by Dániel Erdély, who was the first one to describe these unique flat geometric figures. There is an article in Wikipedia which gives a good overview of this fascinating subject.  It is also where I found this image.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spidron

 As I said, I realized that I didn’t have enough time to make a spidron quilt, even though it fit the challenge perfectly, and I’ve had it on my bucket list for quite awhile.  So on to Plan B.

Another pattern that has been on my bucket list is a quilt pattern that has interlocking plus signs.  Plus signs = arithmetic = numbers!   I tried to draw them out on graph paper, but kept getting stuck after two rows.  I knew that it could be done, but just couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong.  Off to the treasure trove of all information – the internet! I found quite a few examples and quickly sketched out a couple of ideas. 

Some of the examples of plus sign quilts that I found were made with charm packs and were way too large for my purposes.  Some were made with 2 ½ inch strips, which was better, but I wanted something more complex than just one plus sign on a background. I decided that the 1 ½ inch scraps that I have been saving could be put to good use.  Also, I wanted to use up some of those ‘What was I thinking” pieces. And also make it colorful.  Notice the red lips print?  I have absolutely no idea why I had that one!

So here is my Project Quilting 11.1 project!    It worked out to be 9 ½ inches square. A bit too big to be a regular potholder, but I can use it as a hot pad or as an oversized potholder.