Challenge # 1

Getting up today was a challenge!  A beautiful day and a slow moving body, but the call of the quilt is in my head so here I go.
Today I finished the design for a challenge quilt contest offered by my favorite quilt shop.  It sounded simple and doable, so I set up my sewing room to start the project.  It has to be no larger than 36"x36" and only red and white.  They gave some liberties on the white.  Anything from off white to stark white is acceptable and the red can be tone on tone or have a white print in it.  Sounds simple enough, right?  Well yes if you can keep yourself from jumping from one idea to another.  I finally decided on simple solid red and solid white.  It doesn't have to be an original design so I found a great pattern and miniaturized it and designed the blocks to be paper pieced instead of traditional piecing.  I love my design.  I am adding some embellishments, wools and embroidery to the finished product...I think. 

So now it is evening and I have retired to my sleeping room with a smile on my face.  The quilt required 18 blocks of one design and 40 blocks of another design with 55-60 solid blocks throughout.  There will be 28 setting triangles and 4 corner triangles.  And it really will finish at 35"x35"....I think.

I was very happy with today's progress.  I cut out all the pieces for the "pieced" part of the quilt and started sewing the 18 block B's together.  I thought I might be able to finish those 18 blocks and give myself a big "Wahoo", but I have 17 more to put just 2 side strips on.  That I will do tomorrow.  Lesson learned and followed.  Quit when you are tired.  So I did.

So far this has been good.  Let's see what tomorrow brings! 

Namaste,

Mardi