The Ugly Duckling One-Seam Flying Geese Quilt

Earlier this year I began a journey of using up some of my scrap fabrics because they would no longer fit in my cubby bins - especially the white/beige bin full of background fabrics. So, when I saw a tutorial on the one-seam flying geese block on Instagram, I decided I had to try it using up some of those print background fabrics. 

I decided to use various scraps of pink fabrics for the geese portion of the block, hoping that using one color family in the geese would help bring all the random print fabrics together. this experiment in using up these scraps could turn out great or turn out to be a real disaster. Either way, it would be way scrappier than most people like. 

I enjoyed making the flying geese blocks, but I'm glad I decided to keep it at a baby-quilt size - or it may have ended up in the UFO pile!

Making the geese with this technique left me with open-sided flying geese which proved to be a challenge when it came time to quilt it. I ended up using a P2P curved line and just clicking along the points of the block, which avoided quilting across the open-sided geese. The quilting ended up really giving the quilt a lot of dimension, which I really like.

I am absolutely in love with the finished quilt. It's scrappy, but not overbearing and using the pinks in the geese pulled it all together. 

And after the three scrappy baby quilts I've made this year, I'm happy to announce that I have finally reduced that bin of white/beige fabrics!

Happy Quilting!

~Sharla

Under-Appreciated Bolt Challenge

Earlier this year, my local quilt shop held a fabric challenge. The rules were simple, make a quilt, no larger than 40" x 40", quilted and bound, using the challenge fabric. We were to make the challenge fabric "shine" and to "display it in an awesome way".

For the challenge, I decided to focus on displaying my entry in a unique way and to push the boundaries of what people think of as a traditional quilt. My entry, called "Love & Roses", was inspired by a tennis racket mini quilt made by Sun Stitched Studio on Instagram.

The paper pieced rose is a free pattern by Jitka Design. The 3-D roses were made from a Fabric Rose Tutorial by Fusia Craft on YouTube.

It was fun to come up with an entry that was waaay out-of-the-box for this challenge, even though my entry did not win. I wish I could have been a mouse in the corner to hear people's comments!

Happy Quilting!

~Sharla