Snail's Trail. Project Quilting Season 5 Challenge 1

The first challenge for Project Quilting Season 5 was "String Along with Me".  We were to make a quilt in one week using only strings no bigger than 2.5 inches.

My initial plan for this season was to make bigger quilts.  Last year I made a lot of small wall hangings and art quilts.  I worked on precision.  This year I wanted to make things that would be more useful.  That meant larger sizes.  I also want to work on my FMQ this season.   Given the challenges I've had this week, I think I was a bit too ambitious. 

 Things were looking pretty grim around here for most of the week.  Still do for that matter.  There are strings in that bag that go back almost 20 years.  This project has pieces from many of the quilts I've made in that time.  I always saved the strings knowing that someday I would use them.  Every time I cleaned the stash, I was tempted to pitch them.  But...  Here they are and now look at them. 

I started out without much of a plan, ripping notebook paper in half and paper piecing onto it.  I was going to make something big enough for a couch quilt.  I didn't quite get that big.  By Saturday afternoon, I had to stop and piece together what I had finished.

This is the pieced Flimsy before making the sandwich.

I had some help with making the sandwich.  Spud one took care of that process for me.  (No way could I stand over the quilt like that even if I didn't have  bad knee!)

And here is the finished quilt.  

 It took a while to find the FMQ groove on this one.  Once I got it going smoothly about the best description of the pattern is a snail hauling a double-wide.  (I wanted to call it Snailer Park Trash but that seemed a bit extreme!) 

You can just see the meander stitch I used to machine bind it at the very bottom of the picture.  That was a first for me.  Not sure it would work for every project but worked well for this one.

 

 This is a glimpse of the backing.  It is a large print purchased at IKEA a few years ago.  I try to buy some of their fabric whenever I get to the store.  The fabrics are 60 inches wide, perfect for most  of the quilts I manage to make, and less piecing for a large one.  Plus they have some great graphics.  I wasn't sure what I would do with this fabric, but I think it matches the crazy of this quilt perfectly.  

 

 

The details:  Snail's Trail.  46 x 48 inches.  Made entirely of strings and some white quilter's cotton.  synthetic batting and cotton backing from IKEA.  FMQ and machine bound. 

Now if some one would just clean up the paper scraps... It is a good thing that we have a week until the next challenge is published.  It is going to take me that long to clean up the mess!

Project Quilting the brain child of Kim Lapachek who gets her mother-in-law to dream up 6 challenges.  Participants are asked to make a quilt that addresses the challenge in one week.  WaggonsWest is proud to be an official sponsor of Season 5.