Wednesday 17 June 2015

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.

1 comment:

Cheryl's Teapots2Quilting said...

I'm working on a challenge quilt for one of my guilds. Not nearly as hard. We drew blocks out of a hat, and, have to use the block, in any way we want, somewhere in the quilt. Max size of quilt is 20" square. We get to choose whatever fabrics we want to use. I chose sewing theme fabrics, and stitched mine up on a hand crank (hand quilting it now). It's always fun to see what others do with the same fabrics, etc, on challenge quilts. (PS: I messed up on the math on my son's wedding quilt, but, in the other direction. That quilt turned out HUGE, and also stitched on my hand crank)