QuiltCon Charity Quilt Challenge

Can you guess what this pile of scraps is for? Yep. The QuiltCon 2015 Charity Quilt Challenge.

I designed the quilt our Boulder Modern Quilt Guild is making and must admit when I first saw the colors I was both sceptical and a little uninspired. Working with this palette was a challenge . . .  a good challenge, but still a challenge. I guess that's why it's called a challenge project right?  However once a few ideas started coming together, the colors also fell into place. Turns out most of the guild felt the same about the colors. Many said they weren't ones they would have put together and yet everyone ended up liking how they were working in our quilt. My least favorite . . . the burnt orange.

In contrast to the color challenge, I found designing with an alternative grid to be lots of fun. While many of my quilt designs are block based, I still look for creative ways to use the blocks and love exploring all the possibilities. Playing with blocks and alternative grid ideas while designing this quilt was no exception. I think the design works quite well and creates a lot of movement, especially with the addition of the partial blocks.

The next challenging part came with the construction. It's a paper pieced design which I always find a challenge. Really, what was I thinking? Definitely not my favorite type of sewing. No matter how hard I try, I always make a few mistakes. The fabric doesn't cover the entire area. I forget to trim the seam allowance before adding the next piece. I sew on the wrong line. You get the picture. And ripping out those teeny, tiny, itty, bitty stitches is a b___!  Everyone, including me, struggled at times. Let's just say seam rippers were in high demand.   : (

But thanks to the help of our fantastic members, we not only persevered, we conquered!   : )   This past weekend we whipped out ALL the blocks. Let me say that again . . . ALL 36 paper pieced blocks. DONE. Way to sew ladies! I was very impressed that everyone hung in there. No one even came after me with a rotary cutter for designing a paper pieced quilt. Thank You! Thank You! Thank You!

Here's how it looked by the end of the day. I'm loving how the blocks and colors are working.

We'll be assembling the top at the next sew day in November and that should be a breeze after all the paper piecing. Yea! Then it's basting, quilting and binding. I think we'll be in good shape to have it all done in time to meet the challenge deadline.

Stay tuned here at SpringLeaf Studios and on our Boulder Modern Quilt Guild blog as I post about our ongoing progress.

I'm also curious . . . are you part of the QuiltCon 2015 Charity Quilt Challenge? If so, what has been the most challenging part for you and your guild?

Linking up with WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced. This is a big WIP for our guild. 

I'm also linking up with Sew Solid Sunday at Esch House Quilts. I don't always have a solid quilt to link up, but this one fits the bill. Check out the links to see what others are doing with all solids.

Mid October Already!!!

Say it isn't so . . . mid October and I haven't posted once this month. Time just seems to slip away like the leaves are slipping from the trees and the warm temps are fading. My last post was for the Around the World Blog Hop. If you'd like to learn a little more about me and my process check it out. My daughter also posted for the same hop and she'd love to have you take a look and even start following her as she begins to build her blog, Emily Claire Studio.

Today I thought I'd post about a wall hanging/table runner I made awhile back that's in the fall issue of Stitch Magazine. The theme was contrast and you can't get higher contrast than pure black and white. The idea had been floating around in my sketchbook and this particular theme seemed like the perfect excuse to make it up and submit the concept. Thankfully the nice people at Stitch agreed.

I have a real passion for colorful large scale prints. Fabrics by Kaffe Fassett and Amy Butler being at the top of the list. But some of my designs are much better suited for solids. Point/Counterpoint was one such project. I considered several color combinations and even prints as I played around with the early designs, but in the end I chose pure black and white because I wanted to make a very bold graphic statement.

While a good deal of my work is based on blocks and I have lots of fun exploring all the possibilities with blocks, the other side of my design process explores things like line, shape, scale and contrast. Studies in abstract composition lie at the heart of these explorations and they often work best in solids.

My biggest challenge when working with solids is the machine quilting. You may know that the quilting part is not what I enjoy and solids really beg to be quilted well. Deciding how to quilt an all solid quilt can be a struggle. All that space available to create great texture. I thought about pebbles to contrast with the lines but in the end simple straight lines seemed to be all that was needed. More lines might have been nice but then again minimal is minimal right?

The design produced a lot of leftover half square triangle pieces so I put them to use in a small pillow as part of the final submission. There are so many great arrangements you can make with HSTs that I do think you could play with them for a year and never exhaust the possibilites. Especially when fabric options are thrown into the mix. Here's what I included with my submission. Which one is your favorite?

I'm linking this solids post up with Sew Solid Sunday at Esch House Quilts. Hop over to see Debbie's latest all solid design and get a little inspiration.

Colorful Colorado

I did it!  I got my challenge quilt done and delivered in time for the show next weekend. WaHoo!!!

"54 Fourteeners and Amber Waves of Grain"

Indian Peaks Wilderness in the distance

My understanding is four modern quilt guilds in Colorado participated in the challenge. We were given fat quarters of Free Spirit Solids in Tango, Saffron, Apple Green, and Hyacinth. Not the colors I would have chosen to highlight Colorado, but that's part of what makes it a challenge right?

the four given challenge fabrics

More than 50 solids were used altogether. I stopped trying to keep track but most were Kona Cotton Solids by Robert Kaufman. They are the easiest to find locally plus I have a Kona color card.

most of the additional solids used

The rules:  use a discernable amount of each color along with any other fabrics of our choice to create a modern quilt representing the theme Colorful Colorado. It needed to measure at 40".  Mine finished at 40" x 55" to approximate the proportional shape of the state.

My concept:

• use the mountain block from the logo I designed for the Boulder Modern Quilt Guild.
• depict 54 mountains to represent the 54 fourteeners here in Colorado. A fourteener is a mountain peak with an elevation of 14,000 ft or more. In researching the number of fourteeners, I discovered counts of 53 to 58 peaks with the most common agreed upon number as 54. 
• depict the eastern plains which are an integral, but often overlooked part of the state.
• use color to emphasize the Colorado sky from dawn to dusk. This provided a way to include the orange and yellow challenge fabrics as they are used in the dawn and dusk rows of mountains.

Working on this quilt was a great example of color study in terms of relativity. The three blocks below all use the same green in the mountain and yet all look quite different due to the color relationships. A little hard to see the color differences here but the green gets progressively darker in appearance.

I quilted large zigzags among the 54 peaks to suggest all the other peaks of the Rocky Mountains. It reminds me of seeing the mountains when they are a bit hazy in the distance.

zigzag quilting in the mountain section

The eastern plains were quilted with a series of curvy lines to suggest the waves of grain blowing in the wind. We can have very strong winds here.

gentle curving lines in the plains

To be really honest though, it was a struggle to finish this quilt for many reasons.

• I went with one of the first ideas I came up with and am not in love with the whole concept. Normally I would work through a design and explore several directions but didn't have the time for that on this one. Not feeling passionate about the design made it hard to stay motivated.
• I decided in order to pull it off, I needed LOTS of different colors. After 50, I lost count. This meant finding more solids which isn't easy at our local shops and when buying online proves quite hard to discern color differences.
• I thought I'd piece the mountain blocks improv but ended up going with a paper piecing method instead. I designed 7 slightly different mountains. Forgot to reverse the printing the first time but eventually it came together. You can see more about that process here.
• I quilted it in two sections and then pieced the sections together . . . new for me so I winged it. Thankfully it worked without incident. Whewww!
• I faced the edge rather than use a traditional binding . . . not as familiar with this technique but I like the overall finish.
• I lost a week.
• I procrastinated . . . haha, no surprise there.

I'm quite happy to have this one behind me now and am looking forward to a summer of projects I feel a lot more passionate about. Maybe even some non quilt related projects. Time will tell.

If you'd like to see all the challenge quilts, visit the Berthoud Outdoor Quilt Show this coming Saturday June 21st. Maybe I'll see you there.

one last shot before delivering the quilt shows Long Peak elevation 14,255ft. in the background.

I had hoped to have this finished in time to share on Esch House Quilts Sew Solid Sunday last month but missed the cut off so I'm linking up this month. Check out the great pillow Debbie made along with the tutorial to make your own.

Sew Solid Sunday with Esch House Quilts

Linking up today with Debbie of Esch House Quilts who has a regular monthly series going called Sew Solid Sunday featuring projects made from all solids.

As I was cutting strips today for a small quilt, I realized one of the fabrics was the same stripe I had used for the binding on Fitting In and since I don't have any new solid projects at the moment I thought I'd share an older one.

Fitting In was one of the first all solid quilts I made and came about as part of the Tetris Quilt Along by Melissa of Happy Quilting. It was the first, and so far only, quilt-a-long I've done.

Working on this quilt, the biggest challenge for me was the fact that there wasn't a plan. I'm not an improv kind of quilter. This wonderful little quilt came together week after week as Melissa gave us a set of shapes to play the Tetris game. I made myself stick to the "rules" of the game by building from the bottom up and simply allowing the design to emerge each week. It wasn't easy.

At first I felt compelled to try and fill all the spaces like you're supposed in the real game but am so glad I didn't. The white squares represent places where the game pieces didn't fit together right and yet they became a vital part of the final quilt. The design needed those empty spaces to create more visual interest and play. You can see how it all came together week by week by looking under the Tetris Quilt Along tag on the sidebar if you're interested in the weekly progress.

I chose a controlled palette of colors rather than the normal primary Tetris colors. In the end I loved how the quilt took shape each week. In many ways it's probably one of the more modern designs I've made. There is a randomness to it that I find quite pleasing.

One of the things about working with all solids that I find intimidating is that the solid fabric just begs to show off wonderful quilting and that is the part I am least comfortable with. For this one I simply did straight lines in a grid to reinforce the grid structure of the quilt. Nothing fancy but I think it's ok. Just ok. More lines would have been better but I needed something quick to get it finished on time.

I have 2 all solid projects in the wings that need to be done by the end of the month for challenge groups I'm in so hopefully next month I'll have a new finish to share on Sew Solid Sunday.

There are so many beautiful all solid quilts being made that it can be quite enticing to jump in and play with pure color and form. No distraction from prints and patterns. Yet I find that after I've made something using all solids, I'm usually quite ready to busy things up with some prints.  : )

How about you? Do you like working with all solids? If you'd like to see some inspiration check out Sew Solid Sunday links and my Pinterest board specifically for quilts from solids.

Sew Solid Sunday, Working With Solids

I had the pleasure of meeting Debbie Grifka of Esch House Quilts at Quilt Market in Houston last fall. She has a very bold graphic design sense which is reflected in her quilt patterns. One of my favorites is her pattern A New View. Since then I have started following her blog and today I'm linking up with her new series entitled Sew Solid Sunday with one of my first all solid quilts . . . "Rhythm & Blues".

Many of you have already seen this quilt as I previously blogged about about it here and here.

Today I'd like to talk just a bit about my experience working with all solids. My background is in graphic design and I have an affinity for strong, bold graphics. Solids work wonderfully in expressing this graphic style. They strip away the added layer and complexity that a print fabric brings to a quilt design pairing it down to the most basic elements . . . the shapes and colors in context to one another. It's this aspect of solids that I find so pleasing and interesting to play with when designing. Pure form, color and composition.

When working with all solids, you have a wonderful opportunity to really explore basic elements of design. Ask yourself these things when you are designing a solid quilt.

• color;  how do the colors relate in context to one another.
• shape;  how do the different shapes relate and play off of one another.
• composition;  how do things like balance, rhythm and line effect the composition and lead the eye around the quilt.

These are just a few of the things that I find fun to explore when designing any quilt but most especially when working with solids. I'm even working on a pattern based on the design elements from "Rhythm & Blues" which I hope will be out later this year.

However making all solid quilts has led me to realized that after awhile I miss the absence of prints. I actually crave the riot of color and pattern that can only be found in a complete abandon of solids in favor of prints, prints and more prints. This is who I am.

I love both solids and prints for their unique qualities. Solids have the ability to express bold, graphic, even simple concepts with such clarity and strength. Prints have the ability to stimulate the eye and interact with each other on another, more complex level.

If you haven't tried solids, I recommend giving it a go. You can visit my Pinterest board of all solid quilts for some inspiration. It's so much fun to see what creative work others are doing with solids. There are sooo many fabulous solid quilts out there!

Hopefully I'll have a new solid piece to share on one of Debbie's future installments.
Please hop over to Sew Solid Sunday for a little solid inspiration from the other links. : )

On a final note I'd like to give a nod to Debbie's wonderful Mondrian quilt, by leaving you with my version of a Mondrian inspired quilt made mostly with solids entitled "Mondrian Unleashed".