Flags for my Tribe A Project Quilting Challenge

This week's Project Quilting challenge was to use our "team colors."  As I'm not a team person, I side-stepped and went with tribal flags to celebrate and remember all the "Molehill" kids. 

Two things shaped my idea:

My friend Gwen at The Hartley Hooligans invited her online community to mark that sad/sweet event of a child's birthday after their death with artistic or creative renderings of her name -- Claire --  which we then shared on Instagram.  Of course my contribution  was threads and fabric.

Additionally, this week marked the 10 year anniversary of the death of little Rachel B., a dearly loved and sorely missed young lady who was known for her sunny smiles, her love of horses, her messy hand-prints. . .  Tying in to the idea of thread-painting a name with free motion quilting that Gwen inspired, I also used the Scattered Sunshine logo from the website Rachel's family created to facilitate access to horseback therapy for other special needs kids.

And from there, I was off and making 8 more flags to commemorate, celebrate, and remember all the kids of the molehill, both those who have died and those who are continuing to live their unique, amazing lives.

(Note-- yes, our group does have two Daniel's and two Rachel's (in addition to me).

Each flag has little motifs or color choice that reminds me of stories or memories that I associate with each of the kids.  The molehill kids have been a treasured part of my life for very close to 20 years now, and there is a treasure trove of memories to draw on.

What will I do with these flags?  I have plans.  The molehill moms hope/plan/intend to have our 2nd get-together this summer at my house.  Pulling off an event like this is incredibly challenging, considering all the care needs and logistics for travel for 8 moms who do more than the average to keep complicated households chugging along, but hoping that we will meet up in July of 2020, I've got the backyard decor ready to to.  It'll look great draped around the fire pit and swings.  Festive, but not as flammable, as say, sky lanterns (inside joke there).  After our shindig?  I constructed them so that they can easily be made into pillow, should the recipient prefer a throw pillow over a wall hanging.

Thanks for a fun challenge, Kim Lapacek.  I learned some things as I stitched like a mad woman to complete these for the deadline.  Normally I would be tempted to try out more complicated techniques.  As I was working, I considred trying out couching to make the names pop more.  Or I considered using the rental Cricut cutter at our library to make stencils or vinyl transfers which would result in more uniform and polished motifs.  While that impulse to try out more complicated things is not all bad, it does sometimes lead to unfinished, stalled, frustrating zip lock baggies of projects that got too complicated.  I'm glad the deadline kept me in check and on task.  And who knows, I may yet go back and add in some things -- like grommets for hanging, or gilding paste to highlight certain portions.

2020 Roman Style

This month, I'm following Project Quilting, Season 11 hosted by Persimon Dreams on Instagram.    Project Quilting  The first prompt is "Notably Numeric." 

 We're to make a quilted thing, from start to finish between Jan 5 and Jan 12, somehow relating to the numeric theme.


My thought process ran like this:
 I've seen several people warning us all to fill in the date completely lest we be victimized by someone trying to backdate checks or other documents when we lazily just write " '20 ".  

This made me consider if and how this very issue may have been a problem for people using Roman numerals (Romans and others in their Empire, for example).


I then thought about how this year's MMXX is a particularly interesting date, Roman numerically speaking, and would translate to fun graphics.  Or quilt blocks.

Since I had lots of scraps on my work table floor, I just used the rough cut strips to play with making some roman numerals in fabric.  No precision happening here, and that shows up in points not matching perfectly and my numerals being different sizes.  I decided to make that a feature rather than a flaw because this is play time.

Once I had my roughly constructed numerals stitched, I decided that a hot pad would be the very thing to use them up.  Hot pads in my house are very utilitarian, and I expect them to wear out and be thrown away after a year or two, so they are a perfect place to use scraps and improvisation.

My hot pads have 2 layers of Warm and Natural batting and one layer of Insulbrite in addition to the pieced front and the solid back.

I use the faux binding technique as it's fast and easy and there is no hand stitching at all (see above about how hotpads are by no means heirloom quality at our house).  I like to do some detailed quilting with only the pieced top and one layer of batting, then construct all the layers, and add some minimal quilting through all the layers, just enough for structural integrity. 

So -- about 15 minutes of doodling while I was on hold scheduling a plumber and 2 hours of playing in the sewing room, and I'm done with week 1 of Project Quilting.

The same, but different

Take a look at these two quilts made using the same amount of fabric and the same basic techniques.

Both are made from a jelly roll ( pre-cut 2.5 inch strips of fabrics from a single manufacturer's line) so construction was fast and easy.  I arranged the strips on a design wall in an order that I liked, stitched them together, then sliced the finished piecing about 1/3 of the way in.  And no, I didn't measure - just eyeballed what looked about right and cut carefully with a long ruler.  The inset piece features some appliques using the same fabrics.  In the top quilt, Sunnyside, I happened to have a charm pack (5 inch squares) of the same line, so that worked well to make circle appliques.  The second quilt, which I call Furball, features a dog and cat motif in a Basic Grey line -- name escapes me at the moment.  With this one, I only had the jelly roll strips to work with, so I made orange peal appliques just the right size; the orange peal motif just happens to tie in with a repeated design in the fabric print.  With both quilts, I found that adding a thin border to outline the inset panel pulled the overall design together better.

Because the jelly roll strips translate to a very busy design, I just did a loose stipple on both quilts.  But in the applique panel area, I chose to do a more detailed, specific free motion quilting approach.  On the Sunnyside quilt, I did pebbling, which works well with the circles.

On the Furball quilt, I mostly echo quilted, which in turn created its own secondary pattern.



These finish as  large crib quilts, or a pretty standard lap or throw size.  No pattern -- you don't need one.

Next up for quilting -- I spy

I found an Ikea duvet with a fun alphabet print to use as a backing -- the quilt features black and white novelty prints that match up with every letter of the alphabet, so that ties in nicely.  I'm still debating how I will quilt this one.  Quite honestly, though, I can plan to do something, but once I get going with the free motion quilting, it just takes off in an unexpected direction -- witness the wip in the foreground, my flying geese quilt.  I thought I'd be very precise and use a lot of straight lines, but the reality has turned out to be the exact opposite.

Works in progress this week . . .

I worked on the following quilts, in some capacity or other, this week.

I think this answers the question -- do you multitask?

Ummm. Yes, I do.

Gravity Quilt along: Cosmic block

Continuing with my scrappy, unplanned, batiks and blenders version of the Jaybird pattern. . .

This block would be one instance where I don't love how the stash fabrics I used worked out in this particular block.  But I'm going with the theory that the quilt as a whole, with all the blocks together, is going to be awesome.  I was really scraping the bottom of the scrap bin a bit with these blocks, and had almost caved to buy some more fabrics for the upcoming blocks, when, happily enough, I came across a box that had a bunch more scraps in addition to a couple of UFOs.  So, the resolution to use only what I have on hand holds.

Check out the quilt along at Busy Hands Quilts. 

Gravity Quilt along -- Block 6: Ultraviolet

Finished my blocks in my scrappy batik version of the Jaybird Gravity quilt.  What had looked like a huge pile of batik fabric scraps covering every shade in the spectrum turned out to be not quite enough in some color families.  It's hard to see, thanks to the busy textures, but in a couple of places I had to piece creatively.  These two blocks fill my magenta spot, and either the pinky-yellow or the orangey-pink.

Check out the quilt along at Busy Hands Quilts. Generous prizes, and lots of tips for construction, as well as inspiration of seeing other people at work on this gorgeous design. ">