Monday, January 30, 2017

One Monthly Goal and Quilting Jetgirl Alison Glass Challenge

Its time for a reveal of my secret stitching.  Are you ready?

Last year I was always going to link up with One Monthly Goal, now with Patty at Elm Street Quilts, and never quite made it, but 2017 is a new year and I finally joined in all the fun.  My goal was two-fold as I was also joining in on the Quilting Jetgirl Alison Glass Challenge

To begin with, I ordered an Alison Glass fat eighth bundle of Sun Prints and loved each and every one of them.  Last year I had bought myself EQ7 and have been having fun learning all about it.  I originally designed a foundation paper piecing block that I was calling pick up sticks, but it didn't work out as I had planned.  My next choice was using a Monkey Wrench block in a diagonal placement.  It was so hard to choose which prints I would use for the Alison Glass Challenge, but finally decided on some rainbow colors.

Pattern and Choosing Fabrics
 
Next was cutting and stitching those blocks together. 
 
Cutting

And Stitching
 


It is such a fun process seeing those blocks coming together.  The hold up during the process was my working as Intake Coordinator for my local quilt guild's quilt show coming up in February.  I spent a week of January entering all those show entries into a spreadsheet, emailing cover labels to the entrants, and creating placards that will go on the entries for the show.  And two meetings that lasted three hours each.  I started getting anxious that I wouldn't get the quilt finished before the end of January.  But I got it all pieced together, pressed and clipped about a zillion threads, and finally pin basted.
 
Pressing and Clipping Threads


Pin Basting
 
The hardest thing for me is deciding on how to quilt a project.  I really, really, want to get into some "wild quilting", but didn't have the time on this project.  I decided to do some straight, and not so straight, line quilting and going on the diagonal opposite of the block diagonal.  I used thread that matched each of the block fabrics.
 
Quilting,

Quilting,



and More Quilting
 
Of course, next was binding which I did yesterday.  Talk about last minute.
 
Binding Fun
 
And then the finale, a finished project.
 
Lola Giving it the Final Okay


Ta-Da
 
 
I had a lot of fun creating this project and joining in the fun with Yvonne at Quilting Jetgirl and her Alison Glass Challenge.  I'll be linking up HERE for it.  Many thanks Yvonne.
 
I'm also linking up with Patty at Elm Street Quilts for the One Monthly Goal.  Thank you Patty.
 
Happy stitching
 

 
 


Monday, January 2, 2017

Happy New Year and One Monthly Goal

HAPPY NEW YEAR!  May your year be full of joy, good health and lots of quilty fun.

This new year brings lots of new quilting opportunities for me.  One thing I hope to stick with is One Monthly Goal which is hosted by Patty over at Elm Street Quilts.  Check out the information HERE and see all the GREAT sponsors and prizes.  I had hoped to do this last year, but it just didn't happen.

My One Monthly Goal for January is to finish up the project I've been working on for the Alison Glass Challenge Linky Party hosted by Yvonne at quilting JETgirl.  Yvonne announced the challenge the first week in December.  I didn't have any AG fabrics so I went online shopping and ended up purchasing a fat 1/8 bundle of AG Sun Prints and they are gorgeous.  I created a paper piecing plan in EQ7 and worked on it with some test fabric and I ended up dumping that plan and created a new one.    Here are a couple sneak peeks of what I'm working on.

My EQ7 Design and Some of the Fabric

Working Away on Marion, a/k/a Bernina
 
Fabric Left Over Fat 1/8 Piece


As for 2017, I have my Quilter's Planner all filled in with birthdays, anniversaries, and appointments and ready for the fun to begin.  I used this planner last year and loved it and this year's planner has lots of terrific upgrades.

Happy stitching,