Tag Archives: feathers

Modern Quilt Guild Riley Blake fabric challenge

I love a challenge, and I especially love the Modern Quilt Guild challenges. Be it national, or local, the MQG challenges always get me motivated to make something nifty. Personally I use it as a great excuse to make something for myself. For this challenge, Riley Blake Designs provided fat eighths from their Basics category. The guidelines were simple: make something quilted. It was not a requirement to use all the fabric provided, and there was an option add in any solids or Riley Blake printed fabric.

Riley Blake challenge quilt

Finished MQG Fabric Challenge #3: Riley Blake
(click on the photo to enlarge)

I purchased some “Happy Hexi” fabric from Riley Blake, which matched nicely five of the six fabrics we were provided. I also added solid gray and aqua. Drawn to “Happy Hexi,” I decided I wanted to include hexagons in some way.

Riley Blake challenge fabric

After letting the fabrics simmer in my mind, I started sketching some designs.

Riley Black challenge sketch

Using an AccuQuilt GO! Baby, I cut out the hexies from the provided fabric and sewed them onto the gray background. I drew out a grid for the wonky star, with the “Happy Hexi” fabric in the center. I knew I wanted to echo the star in the negative space and drew in the points with chalk.

Riley Blake challenge chalk outline

Then I quilted the points, mimicking the printed fabric in the completed wonky star: chevrons, polka-dots, stripes. As the wonky star has printed hexies in the center, I created a hexie flower in the center of the echoed wonky star.

Riley Blake challenge star pointsRiley Blake Challenge wonky star

Riley Blake wonky star echo

My favorite fabric is the orange dots. I like the contrast of the orange on the white, and the varied sizes of the dots. I used more of that fabric than any of the other Basics. To provide some visual interest, I shifted one of the hexagons down, and then used quilting to echo the fabric in the top spot of the hexie flower. I liked how the solid aqua grounded the movement in the surrounding hexagons.

Riley Blake orange hexie flower

When designing the quilt I wanted to include negative space to really frame the Basics fabric with quilting, and provide substaintial movement. I wrapped feathers around the squared-off wonky star, and varied the size of the swirls used throughout the quilt.

Riley Blake challenge quilting

I had a great time with this challenge, and it was a fun quilt to make. In Kansas City we had our challenge reveal in December, and as always, our members had creative, beautiful and inspiring projects for show and tell. I can’t wait to see all the projects from other guilds. A big thank you to Riley Blake Designs for sponsoring this challenge.

Vines and feathers

I took two classes at the Sewing Expo in Overland Park last week and couldn’t wait to try out the techniques Dusty Ferrell of Country Stitchin taught us. The first class was an edge-to-edge, with more backtracking that I’ve previously used. The second class was feathers, and in both classes Dusty gave us a great balance of discussion and time on the longarm.

Vines-detail

Immediately after the first class I came home to practice the vine pattern on a luscious Ana Marie Horner voille panel. After Saturday’s feathers class I used the both the vines and feathers techniques on a customer quilt for Agnes H. Marking the spine for feathers using Dusty’s flourish ruler made a significant difference for the feathers in the quilt border. Great class, useful tools, sketching and practice, practice, practice make for fun, funky feathers.

Agnes-cream-tall

Agnes-cream-long

Pieced by Agnes H.