Project Quilting 12.2 - Fussy Cut

Starting a new Project Quilting challenge always causes a quandary for me, as I'm sure it does for a lot of people.  What do I make?  What do I WANT to make? Should I make a big project? Or something little?  How much time do I have to devote to the project this week? All these thoughts run through my head and I mull them over for a few days while I try to figure it out.  

It seems that I've been making a lot of mug rugs and potholders.  These are not bad ideas; they are actually great ways to try a new technique or color combination.  They are also good if you really aren't sure that you are going to like the result!  I don't mind using something I don't particularly like as a potholder.  I can always use new ones, since potholders get a lot of abuse in my house.  Mug rugs also get a lot of use, since my family tends to carry mugs, glasses and cups all over the house. So I like having extra mug rugs sitting around to protect the furniture.

That said, I am a bit tired of making mug rugs and potholders.  But I also don't want to start another big quilt project.  I have so many UFOs that I feel guilty starting something else.    

While I was debating what to make, I ran across a Facebook post by Karen Montgomery in her Nine Patch a Day group.  She showed a cute little heart that she made as a gift card holder for one of her grandkids.  She sewed 1 1/2 inch squares together into a 16 patch block, quilted it, then cut a heart out of it.  All the details are here: https://karensquiltroom.blogspot.com/?fbclid=IwAR1OwdLE6qi5dzVs9JHk97sDCN4mF0AhB42d6dtJa8oGpQGKGFhapRhyTwU

I had my project!  I dug through my scraps looking for something that I could fussy cut.  Since the squares are only 1 inch finished, a lot of the novelty fabrics that I have weren't suitable.  I found some leftover pieces of a Valentine themed jelly roll that had some cute little dark pink roses on it.  And I found some coordinating pink charm squares, to use for the alternate squares, the backing and the pocket on the back. 

I've never done any fussy cutting, so it took me some time to figure it out. After some mental gymnastics, I realized that all I had to do was center the roses in a one inch square on my ruler and add a quarter inch for the seam all around it.  Like I said, it was a lot of easier than I was making it!

For me, the hard part was arranging the squares so that the roses were centered. And again, I ended up making it harder than it should have been. I wanted a checkerboard effect, and I only had 3 identical rose squares.  I wanted them to be arranged so that there were two in the wide part of the heart and one at the pointy part of the heart.  The directions called for making a 16 patch, which would cause the roses to be offset.  After several (many!) tries, I ended up sewing a rectangle that was 5 x 4 blocks which worked out nicely.  

It didn't need much quilting, so I quilted it along the vertical seams only, using a decorative star stitch. 

Digging through my ribbon bin yielded a pretty pink grosgrain ribbon, which coordinated perfectly!  I used it for the bow and also a loop to hang it with. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it, but I like it!

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!