Friday 7 May 2010

President's Challenge

Last December, I entered my quilt guild's President's Challenge. For 4$, all participants received a mysterious paper bag - inside were instructions and a fat quarter of red dotted fabric.

The instructions were to construct a quilt (100" maximum circumference, so 20"x30" or 25"x25" etc, or smaller) made primarily of log-cabin blocks, whether traditionally pieced or wonky/contemporary, and the red fabric had to be clearly visible on the front.

With that in mind, I racked my brain about what I could do. I didn't want to just make a simple block, because I'm a very lazy log-cabin piecer... I hate the ironing after every seam, so I skip that step and just finger-press. The result is that my blocks come out not quite with 90 degree angles and straight lines. So I decided to come up with something that works with my, let's call them "relaxed", log cabin blocks. Well, I got pretty elaborate as you can see below:


What you see here is the quintessential Canadian landscape: Log cabins around a lake in the woods with a clear sky above (and at night that sky is filled with stars and a moon :).

The log cabins are traditional log cabins and the red fabric in the center is the paper-bag fabric. Since log cabins are often wonky, I figured my crooked seams would be okay here...

In the center of the pond, which is also pieced log-cabin style are two fish swimming around - wouldn't be a proper fishin' pond otherwise!

The trees are truly wonky log cabins and I just added random strips of green fabric around at different angles.

And then I played with some stars - I couldn't figure out any way to make those log cabins so they're not :) The tiniest star is pieced from 1.5" squares for the HSTs, I think that's the tiniest block I've made in my life :) The moon is appliqued (rough edge).

The quilting is quite elaborate too:


There are stars in the sky and different tree species:


Waves on the pond:


There's grass on the lawn, and the log cabins are truly built of wood:


Ready to go to the guild jury at May's monthly meeting :) I'm so curious to see what everyone else did!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I love it! Now, with the weather this week that we've been having, I'd say you needed snow and ice somewhere there!
Very very cute. I'm sure you will receive raves for it.
I am hoping that the sunroom will warm enough to use my machine today.
You are warmer in NS than we are in Ontario. Wierd!