Mighty Lucky Quilt Club Challenge Announced

The July Mighty Lucky Quilt Club is out and I am so excited to share it with you. This month I am sharing a fun and pretty easy challenge. Dive into your stash for a favourite fabric and see if you can use it to make a single block, even a single quilt with just that fabric. You'd be surprised how fun and very doable that challenge is to do.

Have you heard about the Mighty Lucky Club? It is a monthly challenge for quilters. it's all about pushing ourselves creatively and with technique. You can sign up for one month or the whole year. It is a great collection of designers working hard to inspire you. For only US$5 you get a delivery of a PDF to your inbox with all the challenge details. It is $50 for the year's worth of challenges.

The quilt above is from my July challenge, available now. In the challenge I give you tips and tricks for using a single fabric in a quilt, share different examples, and even provide a block pattern for playing. Actually, the pillow is another example from the challenge. Want to learn more? Check out the Mighty Lucky Quilt Challenge!

You can also learn more about the challenge and hear me chat about a bunch of topics on the new Crafty Planner podcast with Sandi Hazelwood. I was really excited to formally chat with Sandi. Her interviews are always so thoughtful and she asks great questions.  Obviously, I'm biased, but I think it was a great interview.

Samsquanch - A Bigfoot Quilt

Samsquanch

90'' x 90''

Take one Legendary pattern, multiply it by five, add in a family of five sewing, and you get one crazy quilt.

Our family winter project is finally finished. We took a jaunt to the mountains yesterday to capture the quilt in the wild, in some truly squatchy country. It's already made a debut at a local quilt show and is in good use on the odd chilly night in the basement. 

I quilted it with a combination of thread and techniques. The white background is done with a walking foot and using a white Aurifil 50wt. The trees are straight line with the magical olive green from Aurifil. The Bigfoot herself (we decided she was female while making her) is done with a brown variagated in 40wt from Signature. She needed fur and a face so my free motion skills got a lot of practice - once my BSR was replaced!

To make the face my husband and I spent far too much time researching Bigfoot art and representations. Then we compared them to primates and sketched and resized. Total nerds. I gave myself a chalk outline and went at it contour drawing style. Thank you Melissa Averinos for teaching me that!

The backing is a mishmash of greens and leftover browns from my stash. The only fabric we bought for this quilt was the binding. I simply had nothing at home that worked so the girls picked this ombre and it's perfect. 

It really was an incredible project to work on together. From picking fabric to sewing together I had fun. It's easy to get annoyed or stressed when the kids are sewing, but we learned to go with the flow - and their enthusiasm. I gave in to all the requests when my little guy wanted to help, including having him on my lap while doing some FMQ! We had fun stomping through the trees for photos, complete with photo bombs and blurry pictures from laughing. 

It's summer now so there isn't much couch snuggling going on. And Hubby rightly pointed out that the white background is more wintery. I had hoped to shoot this in the snow, hence that white background. But believers know, Sasquatch is always out there...

And one word on the name. My husband is a wildly sarcastic man with a unique sense of humour. He likes to make up words and stories to mess with people, the kids especially. So in our house it isn't Sasquatch or Bigfoot, it is Samsquanch. 

Rainbow Blocks for Pride, for Orlando

Because I am a quilter, because I think in fabric, because I didn't know what to say. Frankly, because I still don't know what to say.

In the wake of the mass shooting in Orlando this week I felt compelled to sew in that most symbolic of ways. The rainbow flag has been a part of my life for over twenty years, when I learned of it's history and became part of the LBGT community in university. I learned far more than my suburban upbringing showed me. I felt love and developed friendships with some amazing people from all walks of life. Whereas I'm not sure I'd heard the word gay before other than as a thing you called someone you didn't like, I learned that love is love is love.

So, on Sunday, I sewed. I hugged my kids and did some yardwork. I sewed. I talked to my husband. We reminisced about gay bars we'd been to together and separately. We spoke of friends, of family, who could have easily been at Pulse that night. I sewed. I sewed rainbows. I want to keep sewing rainbows. 

See, as a quilter, one of the ways we share love is through quilts. (I'm also Ukrainian and so I show it through food, but that's another story.) I'm putting all the extra love into these blocks. I have a plan for them. Then my daughter gave me a really good idea after I explained the symbolism of the rainbow. Either way, this quilt is going to have so much love.

You too can sew these rainbow blocks. They are very easy and I did all the math (it was so hard) for you.

You will need:

• 6 fabrics: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple.
• Neutral thread
• Rotary cutter, ruler, and mat
• Sewing Machine and Iron

For a 6 1/2'' x 6 1/2'' block:

• Cut a 1 1/2'' x 6 1/2'' strip of each colour.
• Sew together and press.

For a 12 1/2'' x 12 1/2'' block:

• Cut a 2 1/2'' x 12 1/2'' strip of each colour.
• Sew together and press.

For a 18 1/2'' x 18/12'' block:

• Cut a 3 1/2'' x 18 1/2'' strip of each colour.
• Sew together and press.

For my blocks I am playing around with colour and value. I dug into the scrap bins and the stash. I'm trying not to repeat a fabric. Because no two rainbows, like snowflakes, are alike.

If the rainbow blocks aren't up your alley or you want to do something directly for Orlando, check out the actions of the Orlando Modern Quilt Guild. They are collecting blocks and completed rainbow quilts to distribute to families and survivors of the Pulse shooting. They ask contributors to use this tutorial from Cluck Cluck Sew to make heart blocks in all the colours. Keep posted on their blog or social media for donation details. 

Maybe making rainbow blocks isn't your thing. Just remember that love is love is love. And frankly, I believe the best way to counter any hate, any fear, is to spread love. So if you are a quilter or a maker or a creator, spread the love the way you know best. 

Scraps Go Round - An Improv Log Cabin Style Quilt

Those early mornings sessions are totally paying off. Number one, for my mental health. Number two, for quilt productivity. A few years after starting these blocks are finished and the quilt top done!

(I've also finished the blocks for another top already and have been working on some snippets now.)

Depending on if you are a glass half full or half empty person, you will love or hate this - I probably still have enough strips left for another quilt like this! If you make quilts you will always have scraps. Good thing there are a million fun ways to use them!

These blocks were made by simply cutting a pentagon, hexagon, or even a heptagon. Then I added scrap strips, log cabin style, all around. And kept going. I did not use a foundation. Some might argue that the blocks are more unstable with it. And they would be right. But I took my time, was careful not to stretch as I sewed, and squared them up at the end. 25 blocks later and I have a 80'' by 80'' quilt top.

An interesting observation for me as I finished this is that there really isn't much of mine that plays in the medium range of value. A lot of lights, a few darks, and some mediums. This is in contrast to the majority of us quilters who live in the medium range. And to most manufacturers who provide us with those medium value fabrics. If you made this quilt with your scraps it would be a completely different look!

The harder part was trying to get a picture of the top with my 8 and 4 year olds at the park! It seems I underestimated my wingspan. And underestimated the height of the man I freakishly asked to help me hold the quilt while The Evil Genius snapped mostly blurry photos. But hey, they are happy and willing to indulge this part of the quilting so I am happy with the outcome no matter what.