Apparently, I Have a Thing for Trees / Beauties Pageant 10

When it comes to decorating for Christmas, I’m a tree girl. Now, my tree isn’t fancy (actually, it’s a 16-year-old artificial one from Target that my husband refuses to replace because it works fine). But we get it up and decorated as soon as the Thanksgiving crowd leaves my house each year, and it’s lit pretty much from then until the new year.

This year, I decided I really only needed the tree. Well, the tree and a front-door wreath (which is like an honorary tree) and quilts. Any other decorations were unnecessary. Once I started laying out my quilted decorations, though, I realized they’re all trees!

Exhibit A: My Tree Is Trimmed mini (see the tutorial here).

Exhibit B: The mini I made during the curves class I took at Stitched in Color.

Exhibit C: My Christmas tree quilt

You know what this means, of course. I have some Christmas making to do for myself. Realistically, that won’t be happening anytime soon, but coming to From Bolt to Beauty for Christmas 2019: something other than trees!

This tree-related rant is not a clever way to distract you from my lack of a finish. I do have a finish, a big, yellow finish. I’m not confident that it will get into QuiltCon, but I love, love, love it. Read more about it here.

If you have a finish, we want to read about that, too. Add your post to this week’s linky!

The pageant rules are simple:

• Post your finish in the linky tool. (No links to your own giveaway or linky, please!)
• Point your readers back here with a text link or use the button above.
• Visit and comment on other participants’ finishes.

Near Wild Heaven: My Two-Color Challenge Quilt

I designed my two-color challenge quilt in EQ7. This shows the final color
placement (although I chose to construct some sections of the quilt differently
than depicted here).

Over the summer, the Modern Quilt Guild announced that American Patchwork and Quilting would be sponsoring a challenge at QuiltCon 2019, in Nashville. The premise was simple: design and make a quilt using two colors. Any fabric and thread used in the quilt top had to be one of those two colors.

As far as challenges go, I found those parameters to be overwhelming. There were too many possibilities. So I approached the creation of my quilt as a value study. I chose two colors—yellow and white—and decided to use a combination of prints and solids to create the effect I was aiming for.

This picture makes the quilt look more mustard than yellow, but it shows the three
different prints up against each other. I think this combination of fabrics works!

The biggest obstacle was finding fabric. I needed multiple prints that all had the same exact color of yellow but that would read as different values. Buying fabric online wasn’t an option; I would have ended up buying yellows that weren’t close enough to include. Instead, I scoured quilt shops in person, taking bolt after bolt to the window to evaluate the color in natural light. I ended up with three prints—one high volume, one mid, and one low—from two different manufacturers (Free Spirit and Art Gallery).

I thought a chunky design would best show the contrast between these prints, so I designed a lapsize quilt with a background that placed the three yellow prints up against each other.

Here she is in all of her yellow-hued glory!

I finished binding my quilt, which I’m calling Near Wild Heaven, two days before the submission deadline. It was too close for comfort for my liking, but I am really pleased with how this project turned out! To see what other quilters are doing for the same challenge, check out #twocolorchallenge on Instagram.

Here is a shot of the back. According to the challenge rules, the back could
depart from the colors on the top. I used a beautiful blue-purple floral from
Joel Dewberry and yellows that didn’t make the cut for the top.

Do you participate in challenges (through your guild, among your friends, or in more structured settings like QuiltCon)? What do those projects do for you as a maker? I can honestly say that I wouldn’t have designed and made Near Wild Heaven without the kick in the pants provided by the challenge!

Linking up to Let’s Bee Social, Needle and Thread Thursday, and Finish It Up Friday ...

A Stash-Busting Rainbow / Beauties Pageant 9

This pencil roll is a rainbow project of mine from 2014.

I started pulling and cutting fabric for a project this week. There is no rational reason for me to be starting something new—some quilty deadlines have come and gone (without the required finish), while others loom in the not-so-distant future—but it was fun to spend time in my stash and use my rotary blade to commit to a palette and design.

The results of that playtime is a rainbow of 27 fabrics ...

So pretty, right?!

I’m not a big rainbow maker (although I have an acute weakness for rainbows of Alison Glass fabrics), but I love how a disparate mix of prints find unity in a spectrum of colors.

I’ll be following Allison Harris’s Strip and Flip Baby Quilt tutorial to make two baby quilts with these fabrics. Why two quilts when I don’t even have one baby to sew for these days? The way I see it, if I’m going to cull through my stash to find 27 fabrics that work together, I might as well make two!

I can’t wait to sew these strips into something beautiful. : )

In other quilty news, I just need to bind and photograph my two-color challenge quilt for QuiltCon before sharing it with you. Yahoo—a finish is coming!

Until then, I’m excited to see what you’re up to. Share your recent finish in this week’s linky!

The pageant rules are simple:

• Post your finish in the linky tool. (No links to your own giveaway or linky, please!)
• Point your readers back here with a text link or use the button above.
• Visit and comment on other participants’ finishes.

Another Friday, Another Flimsy / Beauties Pageant 8

The flimsy parade continues here at From Bolt to Beauty! I may not have touched Me-wow! since blogging about it last week, but I did wrap up the sewing on my Garden Plots quilt top.

This quilt, designed by Alison Vermilya for Moda Bake Shop, is a just-because project for me. In other words, I started this quilt just because I had the fabric on hand, just because I thought the pattern well suited the fabric, and just because I wanted to start something new instead of finishing up a WIP.

My plan evolved as I sewed blocks together, decided I didn’t have enough fabric for/didn’t quite like the look of my blocks, and embarked on some unsewing and resewing. (Plus, I got rid of the heavy-handed pink entirely.) It wasn’t the most efficient of processes, but I tell myself that quilts can come together in organic ways—it’s not all about whipping through project after project, right? And anyway, I really like the final outcome.

One of the fun aspects of making this top for me was the color palette. Before this project, I couldn’t have imagined saying that I wanted to make a gray, teal, mustard, and mint quilt. But seeing those colors together, they work! The mint in particular was an odd selection for me. It was a necessary low-volume addition to the palette, though.

The question now is how I’ll finish this quilt. I pretty sure I’ll bind it in teal. A quilting plan eludes me, though. Should I do something with straight lines on my home machine? Labor over a free-motion plan? I’ve signed up for a longarm lesson at a local quilt shop, so I could also wait and quilt it with a pantograph. Comments and suggestions are welcome ...

As is your submission to this week’s Beauties Pageant!

The pageant rules are simple:

• Post your finish in the linky tool. (No links to your own giveaway or linky, please!)
• Point your readers back here with a text link or use the button above.
• Visit and comment on other participants’ finishes.

Me-wow! / Beauties Pageant 7

The forces of the universe have been aligned against me of late. Between contractors coming in and out of my house for the past month, a series of sunless days, and the overall dwindling daylight as winter closes in on New England, it’s been hard to get any decent pictures of quilts. And I’ve been growing impatient. Eager to show you one of my multiple finished quilt tops, I decided I was going to make a photo shoot happen today, no matter what!

I started off inside, draping one of my finished quilt tops—I’m calling it Me-wow!—over the banister in my foyer ...

That shot gives you a nice idea of the design and colors of this project, but I wanted one that would show you just how many kitty faces I made. So, in an act of desperation, I employed my almost-10-year-old in the endeavor ...

See? There are cats. Lots of cats. One hundred cats!

I’m making this quilt for my sister, whose birthday in early October has long come and gone. I got about 75 of the 100 cats sewed up in August and September and then lost steam. But my guild’s retreat motivated me to prep the remaining blocks and sashing pieces. I spent the entire three-day event—minus time for socializing and fabric shopping and such—working on finishing up this top.

These blocks, which are actually 25 different designs, are free and from Elizabeth Hartman. Elizabeth held a sewalong years ago for these kitties. At the time, I didn’t have the scraps or inclination to embark on assembling my own litter. Now I’m glad to have scoured my scraps for pretty little piles of monochromatic prints and solids.

Now that I’ve finished this top, I keep encountering these cats elsewhere, on blogs and on Instagram. DonnaleeQ whipped up six comparable kitty blocks, complete with whiskers, for a fundraiser. Angela put out a call to receive these blocks for a quilt for her daughter. I was happy to oblige her by shipping six of my extras to her. : )

What have you been working on? Are you in the home stretch of some quilt projects, as I am? If so, we want to cheer you on—link up below!

The pageant rules are simple:

• Post your finish in the linky tool. (No links to your own giveaway or linky, please!)
• Point your readers back here with a text link or use the button above.
• Visit and comment on other participants’ finishes.