Monday, August 23, 2010

My Personal Quilt Challenge

Here's my challenge. I'm going to finish one quilt a month until all the tops I've got stacked up are quilted.

This blog is where I'm going to monitor my progress.

I think I have about 15 quilt tops stored in various boxes and in various piles just waiting to be quilted. Some have been there for 12 years now. The oldest is probably a pinwheel one I made from all my dress shirts that I cut up when I quit my job at the Royal Bank. The newest is from yesterday when I tried to figure out how to do Oh, Fransson!'s chopped vegetables block.

I took my friends Ross and Lawanda to the Ladner Quilt and Car Show (you know something for the ladies and something for their husbands). Nothing spectacular there quilt-wise, but I ran into Paula from the Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild, and she mentioned that another guild she was in did a UFO (un-finished objects) challenge. It goes something like this. Everyone takes a photo of an unfinished object and "registers" it with the guild for 5 dollars. You register as many UFOs as you want. Then you have a date about 3-6 months down the road to get all your UFOs finished. For each UFO one you finish, you qualify for a prize or are put in a draw for fabulous prizes.

Here's the first big UFO that I have finished since joining the Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild.
My inspiration came from buying a great bundle of half yards in green on Etsy. While on vacation, I added more greens and ended up with about 10 different fabrics. I added in three solids - two greens and one orange, since 5 of the fabrics had a bit of orange in them.

I really like the regimented repeating triangles in this layout. I think it makes the quilt look very graphic and modern.

I like making the backs inter-esting, so I do some piecing there too. Usually it's a lot more free form, but this one I drew out and had to keep calculating how many hst I would need for each diamond. I spaced them out and made several sizes of diamonds for the back and am very pleased with how it turned out.

I call the quilt Half Square Triangle Variations 2010.