Fiesta

 

I hadn't intended to enter the Johnson's Sewing Centre quilt challenge this year. I pretty well always have more than enough projects of my own to complete, without joining QALs, BOMs or quilt challenges. But I intended to make a signature quilt by making HST units from a charm pack of print and a charm pack of white. And this year, the challenge fabric was a charm pack of bright, cheerful tonal fabrics. Perfect, so I decided to "kill 2 birds with one stone" and bought the challenge charm pack. 

The challenge is that you have to use some of each fabric on the front of the quilt and you can add whatever other fabrics that you want and the quilt can be whatever size you want. Some entrants even made bags and clothing. 

I had a pretty good idea what I was going to do with the centre of my quilt. I just had to determine what to do with the rest of it. I already had the solid white charm pack in my stash, and ordered 8 different coordinating colours of Kona from Mad About Patchwork. The ideas for what to do just sort of progressed as the quilt did. It was already March when I started my project and entries were due by March 31, so I didn't have time for really elaborate stuff. But if I wanted to win, it needed to have the "wow factor." And I think it does. How can you miss with those colours?

I wasn't sure what I was going to call this quilt. Initially, I was thinking "Whirlwind" after the centre motif, but as the quilt grew, I felt it was taking on a Latin American "flavour" and so ended up with Fiesta. To coordinate with this, I quilted it with the pantograph "Sol" by Patricia Ritter for Urban Elementz. Sorry, I didn't snap a close up of the quilting. 

The only unfortunate thing is I think I like it too much to give it away. So, I have started on a different signature quilt. 
If you want to view all of the entries in this quilt challenge, you can view them on Johnson's Sewing Centre's Facebook page. There are some amazing entries this year, pretty stiff competition. And if you want to vote for mine, it's number 27.

Gone Golfing

 Well, no, I haven't gone golfing. Aside from mini golf and a very brief try on my Wii, I've never been golfing, and likely never will. The title of this post refers to this quilt. 

A member of our management team is retiring and I determined to make her a signature quilt. No one seemed to know her favourite colour(s) from which to compose her quilt, but then I remembered that she likes to golf. It's not very easy to find golf-themed fabric. I don't know why. But I was able to find this pattern by googling. I could pay and download it right away, which was important since the recipient didn't give us much notice. So, I really didn't have time to wait for a pattern - or fabric, for that matter - to arrive in the mail. And I could also figure out how to turn this quilt into a signature quilt by changing the squares into signature blocks. 

I was dropping off my Fiesta quilt, which I haven't blogged about yet, at Johnson's Sewing Centre in Edmonton for their quilt challenge and checked out their sale fabric section. Yes, they had the colours I needed in batiks. I picked up the Deb's Golf pantograph at Sparrow Quilt Co on the same trip, and found some appropriate backing fabric at Fabricland. The pink, the cream for the signatures, the white for the golf balls, the grey for the clubs and the batting all came from my stash. 

I really love being able to coordinate my pantograph with the theme of my quilt. 

I chose green for the thread colour, because what other colour could represent golf? However, if I had to do it over again, I may have chosen a thread that matched the light blue. It wouldn't have stood out as much. But I'm still happy with it. And I'm hoping the recipient will be, too.

Another signature quilt is in the works because we have a unit clerk retiring in July. She has made rag quilts for every nurse in acute care that has retired, so I asked the unit manager if there was anyone besides me that would make her a quilt. No, there isn't and I can't let her retire without getting her own quilt.