Improv Challenge week 2

 Are you ready for a new challenge prompt? Did you find time to play with prompt #1? Here's what I came up with...

Last week's prompt was stripes in pink and purple. I played around in my art journal and after creating a fun painted page I decided to make the blocks above. You can read more about our challenge here. Feel free to jump in any time!

Meanwhile, here's a new challenge to start this week...

Squares in purple and orange! Hmmm I'm going to need to think about this one.... maybe play a little more in my art journal before I sew. Can't wait to see what you all come up with!

Improv Challenge

 The other day over lunch my friend Chris and I were celebrating the near completion of a recent collaboration (more on that soon!) and wondering what we should do next. We tossed around lots of ideas and finally landed on a fun improv challenge. It will allow the two of us to make quilts simultaneously following the same biweekly prompts. It will be fun to see how different our quilts end up! Here's the really exciting part.... we'd love for you to play along. 

Every other Monday Chris and I will each be spinning a wheel we've created on the app tiny decisions. My wheel will determine a technique/shape that is to be created. Chris will spin her color wheel twice, giving us two colors to work with. Use one, use both, add another color of your choosing... there really are no rules. During the next two weeks, work with the selected technique and colors. Make a quilt block, ten quilt blocks, add to a previous block, you get to choose.

Are you ready? Here is the first prompt for our challenge:

We can't wait to create stripes in pink/purple! If you join in, post your improv on Instagram using the hashtag #improvchallenge2024 and follow Chris and I at @scarf.mama and@ellynz.

I'll be posting our next prompt here and on my instagram feed in two weeks!

Panel challenge

 A couple of months ago our guild issued a quilt panel challenge. You could choose a panel from the guild's community service stash or use one you already had...... and do something modern  with it. I'm not a huge quilt panel person to be honest. So I grabbed this one from the community service fabric and set to work.

The panel is called The Dress, by Laura Heine. I looked at it for a long time and finally came up with a plan.

I sliced both pictures into 2 inch columns, identically. Turned one set upside down, then alternated the slices creating a funky reversible version of the original photo. Added some more of the panel as borders and some fabric from my stash, and this is where it landed...

once quilted and bound, this is the perfect size for either a wheelchair/lap quilt for the nursing home or a baby in the foster care program. I kind of love it! 

Pantone Quilt Challenge 2023

I love participating in the Pantone color of the year quilt challenge and have made a quilt just about every year since I learned about it! This year the color of the year is Viva Magenta. Sarah and Elizabeth hosted a challenge and I am happy to share my finished quilt.

My intention was to simply make a wonky square in a square quilt and call it good enough. ahhhh intentions! When I got this pieced together I knew it wasn't done. First of all my "wonky" blocks were not wonky enough! It looked like I had tried unsuccessfully to be precise. UGH!

My friends on retreat encouraged (ok, they were pretty forceful about it! HA!) me to cut it up. Why not? I fearlessly sliced it in 30 degree angle strips, scrambled them up and sewed together, but it wasn't enough. So I sliced again and inserted a new color to the mix! Although the crowd was chanting for lime green, I stuck with my trusty aqua and was happy with my choice. 

I cut these angled strips into rectangles which became square blocks, which eventually became a nine patch! Clear as mud? To me too haha but I'm quite happy with my final quilt. I'm calling it Shattered Magenta.

The main fabric is Kona Pomegranate which is my favorite choice for Viva Magenta. I added additional pinks and oranges from my stash, as well as the aqua. I quilted it in an angled grid on my domestic machine and finished it off with faced binding.  The final quilt is 32" square. Off I go to add it to the link up! (added: I didn't read all of the words and failed to note in my linkup that my quilt is 32"x32" and I am in the USA!)
 

Inspiration Mini

Recently my guild, McKinney Modern Quilt Guild, issued a mini quilt challenge. The prompt was "Inspiration". After thinking about it a bit, I knew exactly what my inspiration for this mini would be!

A few years ago hubby and I had our master bath remodeled. One of my favorite parts of the new bath is the tile we chose for a decorative column in our shower. This tile runs in a ventricle strip from the floor to the ceiling. As soon as I saw it I thought "this needs to be a quilt". 

         

Now was the time to make this happen! I really wanted a hand stitching project to take along on my trip to quilt con and English Paper Piecing seemed to be the perfect way to make this design happen. The only problem was, I didn't have the EPP pieces I needed  and my trip was just a couple days away! So I pulled out a piece of cardstock and started drawing!

8 point diamonds were the main pieces in the quilt. The triangles are just those diamonds cut in half. Add four squares and I'm all set.

I chose 3 shades of aqua solid from my stash (the bathroom is silver gray/white and I use aqua accents.)

Simple grid quilting (after I got home) and big stitch hand binding were the perfect finish for my mini.

The minis will be auctioned off in a guild fundraiser in the fall, so of course I had to make a second one to hang in our bathroom!

What a fun challenge!

 

Quiltcon fabric challenge - Tumbling Triangles

 I'll be honest, I haven't participated in the Modern Quilt Guild's fabric challenges in recent years. Often the fabrics they use just don't speak to me. This year was a different story. When I saw the Wyndham Artisan Cottons they were offering up I hurried to sign up. In addition to the fat eighth bundle I received from the MQG, I ordered 2 yards of one of the "neutrals" allowed, the black gray. I had no plan. So, I started making an assortment of triangle blocks, using the neutral as the background. 

After mulling them over and moving them around on the design wall, I came up with a plan. Since I had controlled the block sizes, no real puzzling was required and the blocks fit together nicely.

I added a skinny silver border to contain my triangles and then added some big stitch triangles just for fun. Quilted it on my domestic machine with my walking foot. 

Big stitched binding seemed like the perfect finishing touch. Now fingers crossed it gets to hang at Quiltcon next year!

Color of the Year 2021

 I always look forward to the announcement of Pantone's color of the year. This year's colors really resonated with me...

Illuminating and Ultimate Gray. Both beautiful, separately and together. In fact, I have decorated my guest bedroom and bath in these colors. So it felt good to dive in and use them together in a small quilt. Small because the McKinney Modern Quilt Guild will be displaying them in the display case at the library again this year, as we did in 2019.

I actually made my quilt several months ago. After I pattern tested my friend Jane (Twiggy and Opal)'s Sparkle quilt, I decided to make a much tinier, two color version as a personal challenge. I used Kona Bright Idea (Illuminating) and Kona Overcast (Ultimate Gray) and made this 12" version of Sparkle...

Today it heads off to the library display. I hope to get up there sometime this month to see all of the quilts from our guild.

Have you made anything with this year's colors of the year?

gifted quilts

There have been lots of happy occasions to gift my quilts lately! In December, friends of ours got married. We gifted them the improv string plus quilt I had begun in Sherri Lynn Wood's workshop in 2018. My pal, Diann, of Happy Quilts quilted it for me.

Then the babies began to arrive! Dear friends welcomed their first grandchild, a girl, in January. Knowing she was coming, I had made my final 2019 fifth Saturday challenge especially for her....

I assure you the quilt is square! Apparently I had my phone at an angle and this is the best photo I got of the quilt.

Another baby arrived in January, this one a boy, a great nephew for us. I hadn't made a Line Dance quilt (pattern by Kathy Mack) in years. This one came entirely from my stash...

Another great nephew will arrive in March. This quilt is ready to head off to his family for a baby shower this month...

These were block lotto blocks I won at a McKinney Modern Quilt Guild meeting last year. I knew they would make a bright and happy baby quilt.

I love gifting my quilts and knowing they are being loved and used.

Birds!

A couple of months ago, a beemate of mine made 2 adorable bird quilts and when I asked about them, she steered me to a free tutorial! So I made a bird.

And I really enjoyed it! so I made another.

And another, and another, and another...... another beemate said "let's swap a few birds!" and I thought that was a great idea. Before I knew what was happening, 14 ladies were signed up to make birds to swap with me as their fearless leader! YIKES! (check out our hashtag, #birdswap2019)

By the end of May (yes, ALL 14 ladies sent their birds ON TIME!) I had a huge collection of birds on my design boards ready to swap....

152 birds, if I'm counting correctly. And they were ALL fabulous! I sent them flying off to their new homes and set to work on my own bird quilt.

Back when I posted my first few birds, my friend Martha said they had her singing "Come on Get Happy" by the Partridge Family. Remember that song? and it's cute bird logo? Well that was all the inspiration I needed! I used Heather Givens (Crimson Tate) Noteworthy pattern for the improv letters. I love her pattern! 

My Get Happy quilt fits perfectly with my word of the year.... JOY! It was quilted by my friend Diann of Happy Quilts with whimsical music notes and I absolutely love it! oh, and the upside down bird? yes it was intentional. 

As if that wasn't enough, for my Fifth Saturday Challenge project for Not Your Mama's Quilt Store I had to make more birds....

whew! now on to the next rabbit hole! stay tuned

2019 colors of the year

I always look forward to finding out what the colors of the year are. This year, Kona hit the ball out of the park with Splash! As soon as it was announced, I ordered several yards of it for my stash, knowing I'd want to play with it and it would be hard to come by later on.

Then Pantone announced Living Coral and I thought, wow, those look awesome together!

So, when the McKinney Modern Quilt guild announced a color of the year challenge for this year I couldn't help but make two entries which I'm calling Mirror Image. Each mini is about 12" square. The guild minis will be on display at the McKinney Library in October so we all kept them small. I used a grunge for my coral and a spotted for my splash (solids for the contrasting small squares and kona black for accents.) I quilted them with my walking foot and added a faced binding.

I can't wait to share all of the guild quilts with you later on!

So, yes, I do love the colors this year and I can't promise that you've seen the last of them from me! I've entered both in the Pantone Quilt Challenge.

Improv round robin

Yesterday was a fabulous day! Our improv small group (the comedy club quilters) had a sew day. We had been planning for quite a while to have a lightening round robin, like Sherri Lynn Wood describes in her book. We finally had the opportunity to do it yesterday. Six of us gathered at a retreat center and set to work.

Before we even arrived, each of us had prepared our center block....

Each person passed their block along to the next person, along with a basket full of curated fabrics (my fabrics were all black and white). Also, each person had a "signature fabric" which they added to each quilt that came their way (my signature fabric is the aqua print in the "center" of the black & white block). We allowed ourselves 30 minutes to work on each quilt (Sherri recommends 20 minutes but that didn't sound like enough for us). The only stressful part for me was that the girls bullied me into running the time clock! ok, bullied might be a strong word, haha, but they did twist my arm.

Gosh this was fun! I took before & after pics of each quilt I worked on (so prepare for photo overload!)

Here is Trae's beginning block:

I picked up on the red in the rooster & added my signature aqua:

Chris D's quilt came to me next:

and I added a strip carrying the orange print across:

Next up was Susan's very large quilt!

I sliced and diced a strip set to make a narrow border:

Chris's quilt had a spot that needed a set in, y seam block. I chose to ignore that and leave it for Bonnie to solve. Nice of me, huh?

she had a lot of gray in her box and no one had really dipped into it. There was also and orphan block which I added to my hashtag row:

Last up was Bonnie's quilt:

I thought it needed another big punch of that school bus yellow!

The afternoon went by so fast! I expected it to be stressful but it was so much fun. Here are our finished quilt tops....

I can't wait to see how everyone finishes them off.

Michael Miller fabric challenge

The modern quilt guild issued another fabric challenge and I jumped on board! First of all, free fabric, duh! and second, I really enjoy challenges. We received three colors of the hash dots fabric and peach solid cotton couture, a fat eighth of each. Since it is ok to add other Michael Miller solids, I ordered some of the Marine Cotton Couture, which matched one of the hash dots we received. And, like always, it sat on my cutting table for weeks waiting for me to be inspired.

Finally, I decided to do a variation on my Funky Dresden pattern which I designed and shared here on the blog almost 2 years ago (gasp! where does the time go?).

We were told to use at least 2 of the three hash dots provided and the peach solid. The funny thing is, once I got to designing and sewing, the hash dot I left out is the Marine that matched the solid I had bought! I inserted a narrow piece of the peach into the other hash dot dresden wedges and only used the one background fabric, not two like I had in my previous Funky Dresdens.

My finished mini quilt ended up 13" square. I quilted it on my domestic Janome 6600 and left the wedges and center unquilted so they pop. 

It's fun to see what others have come up with! Check out the #mqgfabricchallenge on instagram to see more!