Elgin Piecemaker's Challenge

In October of 2014, all of the members of the Elgin Piecemaker's Quilt Guild, signed up for a challenge!  These are always fun to do, but can really stretch us.  We received two F8ths of Kaffe Fasset fabrics and we could add as many fabrics as we wanted, but could not purchase more of the focus prints.  The instructions were to make anything we liked, but the perimeter had to be larger than 40" and smaller than 100".  In April, we got together for the "grand reveal".  Everyone did a great job of keeping it totally secret :-).  (Click on the photos to enlarge them.)

Kaffe Fassett challenge fabrics

Exciting when my little quilt won first place

Diane's quilt received second place

I decided to make a "blooming 9 patch".  It was fun auditioning fabrics from my KF stash to make that work.  I decided to do 3/4", but I'm a little math challenged, so I cut the strips 3/4" instead of 1 1/4"!  So, the finished 9 patch blocks are 3/4"!  Yikes...this was a fiddly project!  My trusty Singer 15-88 treadle came through for me with lovely seams.

Laying it out was a real puzzle.

The inner pink was the only non Kaffe fabric. The pinks look mauve in these photos!

Quilting it was a real challenge as it was very thick with all the seams from the 9 patches.  I decided to quilt only in the alternate rows so I could avoid the thick 9 patch blocks.

Fussy cut fans in the center.

I used the lovely embroidered label we received to make a pocket to hold the original instructions for the challenge.  I added a couple of strips of the challenge fabric to frame the label.

After the judges were finished deciding on first and second place, based on workmanship, use of fabric, etc. there was a viewer's choice vote.  It was really difficult to chose which one was our favourite!!  Here are all the other challenge projects:

This was a very fun challenge and the prize?  Well, Diane and I "get" to plan the challenge for next year and be in charge.  We're going to put together a real difficult one as payback LOL.

Fall Batik exchange quilt

In my last blog post, all the quilts in the Hearts and Hands exchange are shown.  Here are a few more pictures of my quilt the right way up as well as closeup photos of the spectacular quilting job by Cathy Shepherd of Eagles Wings Quilts. The pattern is Four Patch Charm Quilt by Tamarack Shack.  She used a technique to make the blocks from a Missouri Star you tube video.  I have enough fabrics left to make another one of these quilts..perhaps I will do a different layout with the blocks.  The binding is done with 12" strips of all the fabrics. (Click on the photos for a larger picture.)

My quilt right side up :-)

I thought the photo above looked a little pale so I took it outside to take a few more photos of it :-)

Corner showing the scrappy binding and quilting

close up of the quilting in the white areas

Close up of the quilting

Some of the original fabrics - 2nd from left in the 2nd row is the focus fabric and the one beside it on the left was my contribution to the mix

more of the fabrics

I found this lovely wide backing fabric which is also a batik

Fall Batik exchange with Hearts and Hands Quilt Guild

In the fall of 2014, we chose a focus fabric and everyone purchased a 1/4 yard strip of fabric for each person participating.  We had a total of 18 pieces in the exchange.  Today we got together for a very fun morning of show and tell to see what everyone did with their fabrics.  Some of the tops were not finished and some binding was still warm when it got to the meeting LOL, but 13 of us were able to show what we were doing.  We also had the quilt from one member who was not able to make it.  Here are some photos of the grand reveal (click on the photo to enlarge it for a better view):

The second fabric from the left in the second row was the focus fabric...the one beside it to the left is the one I chose to go with it.

Tina (left) bought some extra of the beige background, which was her contribution, and made these lovely houses

The long arm quilter did a great job of quilting this one

All the doors were quilted with a different design

Laurie is working on the blocks for her quilt.  She added some other batiks to it to give more variety

Ina did a split hourglass pattern from the Block magazine.

Chris added a cream background which really set off the blocks nicely

Deb's cool quilt top is almost finished..one more row to add to it to fit a queen sized bed

Audrey really got out of her comfort zone and used a lovely vibrant striped fabric to set her disappearing 9 patch.  She figured sunglasses were needed to view the quilt LOL

Elizabeth decided to do the disappearing hourglass as well, but found it too fiddly so she......

....just did the hourglass blocks and put them together to make this wonderful quilt top

Corrie's beautiful star quilt

Maria also used the Block magazine from Missouri Star to make her 'ring' quilt.  She used an embroidery stitch on her machine to quilt around the rings...very pretty

Cathy made this beautiful top for her over 90 year old father whose favourite colour is red.  He will love this quilt!

Mary Lynn was not able to make it as she was out of town, but she left her quilt with me to take along to show.  It's all finished, quilted by Bonnie Wilson and bound :-).

This is my quilt...I used a pattern from a tutorial from the blog "Tamarack Shack" using charm squares.  Cathy Shepherd did the long arm quilting and did beautiful swirls in the white areas.

Joyce is making long legged star blocks and added a few more colours into her quilt.  We had fun brainstorming ideas for sashing and/or cornerstones or leave it the way it is.  Lovely colours!

It is always amazing how different all the projects are when each person started with the same set of fabrics.  We are already brainstorming ideas for our next challenge :-)