Color Palette Challenge

This is a stretch for me, that's what's so great about Judy's blog--she stretches us, challenges us, makes us better quilters!

I'm kind of choosy about my colors and there are certain colors I'm uncomfortable with but I decided I'm going to do this!

It looks like Judy's making a whole quilt each month but I can't do that so I have a plan: I'm going to make this same quilt block each month with the monthly color palette THEN make them into a quilt at the end of the year. This block is from one of my favorite books, "Knockout Blocks and Sampler Quilts" by Judy Martin. I feel the blocks in it are so different and original. With this particular block, I can use 5-6 different colors easily and I can't wait to see what the next month will bring! (In this photo it looks like I used black but it's really a really dark blue.)

Oh, and the best thing about this challenge: that we get to use all those fabrics from our stashes that are at the bottom of the stack, wondering when they're going to be chosen to appear in the next project! I have LOTS of those!! LOL!

UFO #5--All Done!

By the hair of my chinny-chin-chin I finished my UFO #5, "Anteitum"just in time . I started this quilt at a mystery retreat last June and finished the top there then put it away. I pinned it a couple of weeks ago but didn't remember I needed to finish it until yesterday! Can I quilt it and sew on the binding before tomorrow, I wondered? Well, I spent 5 hours today quilting it on my domestic machine (Janome 6600), put the last stitch on the binding at 11:48 pm, took a picture (that's my adorable DH holding it for me) and typed up the blog.





I did a small meander on all the light, background spaces and put a little swirly stencil on the blue spaces, (haven't washed out the markings yet!) and let the rest "pop out". I love it! It will go to the next person who requests a quilt from me for one of the local charity auctions we have so often where I live in northern California.
Thank you, Judy, for inspiring all of us to finish our UFOs!

Wool Applique ala Primitive Gatherings

Thank you, Judy, for letting us show our design walls every Monday. I am so inspired by what I see every week!

I've been a member of the Valley Quilt Guild in Yuba City CA for 15 years. I've lived 45 miles from there for over 11 years now and even though there are many quilt guilds closer to me, I still go there for meetings every month because my very favorite quilting buddies are there. Last week, we were lucky to have Lisa Bongean from Primitive Gatherings in Wisconsin teach us how to wool applique! What a character! We were thoroughly entertained by her lecture and her techniques and amazingly wonderful wool and patterns. I'm pretty sure I'm going to get hooked on this 'new' process as the wool is SO lovely to needle through and the sewing goes SO much more quickly than traditional applique. Instead of spending weeks or months producing a work of art with cotton, you can get a beautiful wool applique project finished in a fraction of that time. I'm all over that!!  This is the project we worked on in the class.

I'm also in a Row Robin group and this is the row I'm to be inspired by. I plan to add a tree, another type of house and a bear in the row I make to go with this one.