New Year's Day 2013 three quilting friends and I got together to sew up an on-line New Year's Day Mystery Quilt. We all had a great time sewing together but we were less thrilled about the process of doing a mystery quilt in a day.
We decided that this year everyone would be using same pattern (not a mystery) but everyone would use different fabrics. We wanted the scope of the project limited in size so that the quilt blocks could be done in one day. That meant we needed a pattern for a lap sized quilt, preferable using pre-cut fabrics, so we could quickly get to sewing.
Green Fairy Quilts had a great sale on 5 inch Charm square packs in December. They were selling out quickly so I ordered the Charms in 5 different fabric lines. Having done that, I started searching the Internet for Charm friendly patterns. When I found the Wonky Star Tutorial on The Silly BooDilly blog I knew I'd found our New Year's Day Project. One of the women in the group checked it out and gave it the thumbs up. No one else in the group knew what pattern we were using nor what fabrics they would get. So it was a bit of a mystery until New Year's Day arrived. Very exciting.
Everyone was instructed to bring their sewing machine and extension cord, a ruler, rotary cutter, and a culinary contribution for our potluck lunch.
Each New Year's Day quilter received 2 stacks of patterned Charm squares, 2 stacks of background Charm squares and 1 yard of the background material. The expectation was that each person would sew 9 Wonky Star blocks. Borders, backgrounds, bindings and backings were up to each person's ingenuity (and stash)!
Each set of fabrics was numbered and the numbers were all put in a container. Everyone pulled a number and that was their fabric. That turned out to be a huge part of the fun. Ginny who normally works with blues and greens got orange fabrics…and discovered she loved working with them. Janet got batiks of multi-colors which she found really challenging. Kace had lights and darks in her stack of patterned charms and some of the light charms just didn't work in the stars. In the end, everyone felt challenged by the fabric but is delighted by the resulting quilt!
4 of the 5 of us were at Guild the other evening. Everyone brought their quilt or WIP (work in progress) to show at Show and Tell.
Here they are!
We decided that this year everyone would be using same pattern (not a mystery) but everyone would use different fabrics. We wanted the scope of the project limited in size so that the quilt blocks could be done in one day. That meant we needed a pattern for a lap sized quilt, preferable using pre-cut fabrics, so we could quickly get to sewing.
Green Fairy Quilts had a great sale on 5 inch Charm square packs in December. They were selling out quickly so I ordered the Charms in 5 different fabric lines. Having done that, I started searching the Internet for Charm friendly patterns. When I found the Wonky Star Tutorial on The Silly BooDilly blog I knew I'd found our New Year's Day Project. One of the women in the group checked it out and gave it the thumbs up. No one else in the group knew what pattern we were using nor what fabrics they would get. So it was a bit of a mystery until New Year's Day arrived. Very exciting.
Everyone was instructed to bring their sewing machine and extension cord, a ruler, rotary cutter, and a culinary contribution for our potluck lunch.
Each New Year's Day quilter received 2 stacks of patterned Charm squares, 2 stacks of background Charm squares and 1 yard of the background material. The expectation was that each person would sew 9 Wonky Star blocks. Borders, backgrounds, bindings and backings were up to each person's ingenuity (and stash)!
Each set of fabrics was numbered and the numbers were all put in a container. Everyone pulled a number and that was their fabric. That turned out to be a huge part of the fun. Ginny who normally works with blues and greens got orange fabrics…and discovered she loved working with them. Janet got batiks of multi-colors which she found really challenging. Kace had lights and darks in her stack of patterned charms and some of the light charms just didn't work in the stars. In the end, everyone felt challenged by the fabric but is delighted by the resulting quilt!
4 of the 5 of us were at Guild the other evening. Everyone brought their quilt or WIP (work in progress) to show at Show and Tell.
Here they are!
Kace
Ginny
Janet
Judy
Sharon's WIP. (Photo taken on New Year's Day)
We have had such a great time working on this project!
We are already talking about New Year's Day 2015!