Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Eggo Inspired Quilt

Breaking it up in a percentage of colours

Eggo box-top


The Common Thread Quilt Guild's challenge this year was to use a box-top as inspiration to create a quilt. We had to use every colour found on the box-top.  My randomly picked box-top was from a package of Eggo Waffles. Aren’t those amazing colours? There’s even a couple of blueberries and a raspberry to go with the yellow, red, oranges, white and brown.

Quilted details

I calculated roughly the percentages  of each colour and came up with this lap quilt.

Since I also want to learn to machine quilt, it was the perfect project to practice on.  I don’t have a machine that does free-motion but I got to practice my “sewing in the ditch” several dozen times. By the end, it was getting pretty good.  I also tried to get fancy and machine-quilted a couple of flowers.  It wasn’t too difficult to do on a practice piece, but then there’s a whole quilt that needs to be rotated under the sewing machine...well, that’s another matter. So the rest of the strips got wavy lines!

 
Eggo Inspired Quilt














I've linked up to Sarah Goer's Show Me Something Orange linking party.

Learning to Paper Piece


Paper piecing - the back

I recently had the opportunity to try my hand at paper piecing as part of a group project.  For those of us who had little or no paper piecing experience, we got to do the easiest pieces. It will eventually be a double wedding ring in blues and white.  I’m sure the final result will be incredible.

Final result






What a learning experience!  I enjoyed how the process was similar to making a puzzle. The only really difficult part was remembering to think backwards in 3D!  I’m not usually that careful or worried about matching things, which unfortunately usually shows. Paper piecing really does give very precise results.

I suspect that as a beginner, paper piecing a double wedding ring is probably not recommended. I hope that eventually I’ll find an easy project to paper piece, or an easy class to take.

Update: August 1, 2013

finished paper pieced double ring quilt in blue and white
The bride-to-be receives her gift
Our quilting group had a picnic and gave the bride-to-be her quilt. Isn't it wonderful?