It's That Time Again!

 

It's Project Quilting Time!  I love the fact that Project Quilting happens right after the holidays have died down and the bleak dreary days of winter start staring me in the face.  It really gives me something to focus on besides the fact that the sun probably won't make an appearance for another 6 or 8 weeks.  No, I don't live above the Arctic Circle, it's just that winters here in Western Pennsylvania tend to be gray and cloudy with only a few rare sunny days.  And when we do get a sunny day, the temperatures usually do a nosedive.  So, no, I am not a fan of Western PA winters!  The spring and fall however,  are glorious!  Summer?  That's a whole 'nother post, for later!

So back to PQ!  When I first read the title of the first PQ 12 challenge, I was curious, but not thrilled.  It's called Illuminating + Ultimate Gray, which are the Pantone colors of the year for 2021. The challenge is to make a quilted project using those two colors.  Gray and yellow.  In my mind, neither of those colors are bad by themselves, but together?  Yuck.  So this challenge was definitely NOT going to result in a bed size quilt!

I waited a few days to see what other people were posting, and yeah, I can see that, depending on how they are used, the combination is not so bad.  I'm not going to make something huge, because I’m not that big of a fan. 

I’m trying to use up what I have and not make any unnecessary purchases, so I went spelunking in my scrap bin to see what I could come up with.   Yellows and grays are woefully underrepresented in my stash, but I did find some yellow 1 ½ inch strips and a few chunks that were gray or mainly gray. 

That has been somewhat of a theme for me during this pandemic - Stay Positive and make the most out what I have.  With that in mind, I have made two projects that use the ‘+’ sign so far and decided that this would be number 3.

The first project was a challenge from the Creative Quilter’s subgroup in my local quilt guild. The idea was to make a small wall hanging using the theme “Yellow Line”.  The challenge was to use black, white and yellow and to have the yellow form a line of some sort across the quilt.  We all used the same yellow fabric, and when we have our quilt show next year (fingers crossed…) we will hang them so that the yellow line from one quilt connects to the yellow line in the next quilt.   I made a crazy quilt with the darkest prints toward the bottom, and shaded it to the lightest on top, then appliqued yellow plus signs diagonally across it.  I titled it “2020 – Staying Positive Amid the Chaos”.  I plan to embroider word like pandemic, murder hornets, Midwest derecho, wildfires, contentious presidential election, rioting, record breaking hurricane season, etc. across it, to represent the chaotic year that it was.  

I’m not done embroidering yet because I wanted to wait to the end of the year to see what else could possibly happen!  I think that I have enough words to embroider to keep me busy for quite a while!

The second was a mug rug for my swap partner in the Teal Mini Swap.  I made small 9 patch blocks with bright colors and a white background.  The brights were in the middle squares of each block, so that it looked like a bunch of little plus signs. I unfortunately forgot to take a picture, and I don't want to steal anyone else's photos, but if you search for "Plus Sign Quilt", you will find something similar, I'm sure.

Here is my project for PQ 12.1

I’ve always been interested in making an interlocking plus sign quilt so I decided to use that idea on a small scale. It is about 8 1/2 inches square, so it's either a potholder or an oversized mug rug, depending on how I use it!