PQ 10.2 Cozy of Last Resort

 As soon as I heard the challenge, I knew which stash of fabric was going to come out and play.  It was a set of red, white and blues I collected after finding a cute little dress in a thrift shop and deciding the colors were perfect for a quilt.  The reds were easy.  I passed up the white polka dots in my collection as being too transparent.  The blues were harder to match.  I have found that blue is actually a very hard color to match.   They are not perfect but they work.  I tried cutting the appropriate sized triangles and much to my surprise, made it all the way through the stack of fabrics.  Unfortunately, I realized I need twice as many little white ones as large colored ones.

 After much head scratching, internet perusing and seam ripping, I got the hang of using the triangle paper to make flying geese.  It was not entirely self explanatory.  It also required a degree of dexterity that I was missing.  I was making good progress once I got the hang of it all.  However, by Friday morning, I wasn't even half way through piecing.  Even with doing multiple rows at a time to cut down on trips to the ironing board, I just wasn't getting it done.  Another thing that actually made a great big difference was switching from my tiny and sturdy BL9 to my larger machine.  I had to (horror of horrors) change it from embroidery to sewing but that thread cutter and larger sewing surface really make a difference. 

 

Thus it became time for the cozy of last resort.  I call it that because once upon a time, the infamous Quilt Chicken made an air freshener cozy at the last minute just to say she had completed the challenge.  It is  a lovely cozy and a wonderful lesson in get 'er done.

I went to my stash and found the adorable snowpeople in trucks fabric along with the snowflake/star fabric.  I had to argue a bit to avoid getting started on another complicated design.  This was going to be your basic alternating blocks.  A quick table runner.  I did have a blue fabric similar to the red stars but I didn't want to think that hard.  So it is a just a basic checkerboard.

 

I should have started here in the first place.  My skills are very rusty.  There was joy in cutting and sewing simple blocks.  I managed to line up most of my corners and iron most of my seams in the right direction so they all laid flat.  I don't usually even take pictures of the back of my flimsies, let alone post them but I am pleased with how this worked out.

Here it is appropriated shot on a pile of melting snow.  It measures 16" x 24",  The batting turned out to be thicker than I thought, so the quilt is a little puffy for a table topper.  I did a simple cross hatching quilting.  I decided that because I found the walking foot before I found the FMQ foot.  It is the simple things, I know.  An important reminder to self.  Quilting causes the fabric to recede.  I should have quilted over the red squares leaving the snow people to pop out.  However, I knew the white thread would show my errors on the red.  Yes.  I could have gotten the red thread but I didn't think of that until I was already started.

Here you can see my only sort of wavy lines.  It turned out better than I hoped given my rusty quilting skills.  The walking foot is a wonderful invention!

 And an art shot just because I finished in time to try and take arty pictures rather than desperately snapping a blurry shot just to get it linked in time!

PQ 10:1 The Light at the End of the Tunnel

Getting back into the swing of sewing for fun and quilting has been a bit more challenging than I thought it would be.  As soon as I heard the challenge for this week I knew exactly what I wanted to do.  However, it was clear I did not have the right fabrics to make it happen.  My personal challenge for this season of Project Quilting is 'use what you have'.  That meant I had to go with a second choice.  I wanted to to something that looked like the light at the end of the tunnel.   I decided I could do it by using up lots of ugly, irritating scraps and make a chenille quilt.

How is the light at the end of the tunnel hopeful?  Because I always hope it is the end of the tunnel and not a train!

The chenille quilt is a quilt sandwich made up of layers of scrap fabric between two pieces of fabric.  I've always (OK both times) used black fabric as the outside to provide lots of contrast.  Once you sandwich and pin you stitch rows of stitching to make channels.  For this project I tried to sketch out the bare bones of a tunnel.  Then you carefully cut through all of the layers, without cutting the backing.  As the fabric shreds and frays the colors come through.  It amazes me that I can use such wildly disparate fabrics with some really strong patterns and they still blend in as a color.

I wasn't able to get a good picture of the whole thing.  It measures just about 18 inches on a side.  You can kind of get the idea of the tunnel from this.  Ideally the side channels would have been curved but I knew it was going to be challenging enough to slash the center bits without adding more curves.  Plus, cutting on a curve equals cutting on the bias equals less fraying of the fabric.  That was not the best plan.  There may have been a few extra aggravated slashes here and there.
 

I finished everything but the binding a few days ago.  Since then we, the quilt and I, have been having a conversation about the binding.  
Quilt, "I want a rainbow colored blanket stitch with really pretty hand spun rainbow perle cotton."   Me.  "No."
Quilt.  "Rainbow."
Me.  "How about a nice solid black binding machine stitched on the front?
Quilt.  "No,  Rainbow, but not lots of rainbow.  Hand stitched rainbow."
Me.  "That would be lovely."
Quilt.  "YES.  Now go get the thread."
Me.  "Have you looked outside lately?  There is over a foot of snow on the ground and all the stores are closed."
Quilt.  "That isn't my fault.  I'll wait."
Me.  "The deadline is tomorrow."
Quilt.  "So."
Me.  "How about a lovely black thread zig zag so you are fully finished and we can maybe talk about more embellishments in the future?"
Quilt.  "It is a bit raggedy around here and I if you put me down, I'll end up in the WIP pile over there so OK.  But I still want rainbows!"
Me.  "We'll talk again." (*after I finish the rest of that pile.)

Made for Project Quilting season 10.