The 6-Quilt Stashbuster Challenge

Hey, how about a new challenge?

My good friend Koleen has already drafted her list of quilts for 2011 and 2012 that she wants to make. Each list contains about 25 quilts. She made a list for this year too, and she's just about halfway through it. She's very ambitious and very determined; and trust me, she'll get it done. In fact she'll probably have them all finished before the end of the year.

So wouldn't you think that's enough quilts for the year? No! In April Koleen told me she was challenging herself to make six nickel quilts, from the book Nickel Quilts by Pat Speth. The plan is to choose six quilts and then make one block a month for each quilt for 12 months. If the quilt has more than 12 blocks, then you divide the total number of blocks by 12 and make that many each month. So for example, if a quilt had 36 blocks, you'd make 3 every month for a year.

Koleen is the one that came up with the September Sun challenge, and I enjoyed it; so I said, I'll do this with you! Then we challenged Barb and Sherry to do it with us, and poof! a new Challenge was born. Now a few more girls in our quilt group might do it too but on a smaller scale.

The 6Q Stashbuster Challenge was scheduled to start June 1, so I spent most of May choosing the quilts and cutting as much fabric ahead of time as I could. All my quilts are scrappy, so most of the fabrics I'll pick and choose as I go along. Here are the six quilts I chose.

The first one, above, is "Dutchman's Puzzle", from More Nickel Quilts by Pat Speth. These are 8" blocks, and I'll need 61 blocks to complete a queen-sized quilt, so I'll make 5 blocks a month.

This one is "King's Crown", also from More Nickel Quilts. These are also 8" blocks, and I want a queen-sized quilt, so I'll make 5 blocks a month for this one too.

Next is "Conestoga Star", from an old issue of Fons and Porter's Love of Quilts. Several years ago I bought this gorgeous kit for it, all batiks, and it's been sitting around ever since. Time to do it! These are 12" blocks, and I'll need 25 full sized blocks and 20 half blocks for the borders for a queen-sized quilt. So I'll make 2 full blocks and 2 half blocks each month. I like big quilts.

The foundations for these blocks were not included in the kit, and I wasn't about to trace them all out from the magazine, so I'm using a block called Dusty Miller from the EQ6 block library. The proportions are slightly different, but the block is the same. I printed out my foundations on freezer paper, so they'll be reusable too.

I like this pattern a lot, so I might make another scrappy one for next year's Challenge, only not in batiks.

I've wanted to make "Bali Sea Star" from the cover of Kim Brackett's Scrap-Basket Surprises since I got the book. More of the quilts from this book are already on my list for next year. These are 12" blocks and I need 20 blocks, so I'll make 1 block a month, and some months I'll have to make 2.

The Crazy Log Cabin blocks were part of a block exchange from about 10 years ago. Four of us from across the country exchanged one block a month. See how the logs are crooked? It's a foundation pattern we printed out from EQ's Sew Precise program.

I want to make this as a queen-sized quilt and set the blocks together like the quilt on this postcard. These are 6" blocks, so I need a total of 225 blocks for my quilt. I already had about 40 blocks done, so I'll need to make 16 blocks a month to get them all finished in a year.

The last one is a mystery quilt that McCall's did last year. It was presented in 6 parts, so the number of blocks required every month is variable. It finishes to something like 86" x 101", probably a king-sized quilt. If you have the magazines, then you already know what it looks like. For everybody else, I guess you'll have to wait and see.

Part 1 of the mystery is comprised of 20 Friendship Star blocks and 12 Diamond blocks. I had planned to make the 12 diamond blocks for June, but I got a late start and haven't got any of them done yet.

All together I should have made 43 blocks for the month of June, and here's what I actually finished. And I still have the Star Crazy BOM blocks to do every month. Am I nuts? Probably. Think I can do it? Maybe. I might have to scale back a little, maybe drop a quilt or something, but I'll make a valiant effort. Am I having fun? You bet!

Imagine how much stash I'll bust when they're all done. Heck, maybe I should make all my quilts this way. Start your own 6-Quilt Stashbuster Challenge today!

EQ7 Arrived

Oh, happy day, the UPS man has just delivered my EQ7!



But I have chores to do that must get done today, so playtime will have to wait.

If you EQ, have fun today!

Second Finish for May

I put the last stitch into the binding of my Hourglass Log Cabin this morning. The top sat unfinished for nearly a year while I tried to decide how I wanted to quilt it. The quilt measures only 24" x 24", so it seemed a little silly to load it on the long arm, nor did I want to stitch in the ditch or hand quilt. I'm no good at free motion quilting either, so there weren't a lot of other options.

I considered trying to machine embroider a quilt design in each set of four blocks but decided there might be too much of a learning curve. I'd still like to try that at some point, just not right now.

I finally decided to try stitching a design through the Golden Threads paper. Golden Threads quilting paper is a thin, translucent, gold-colored paper that is used as a no-mark method of creating a quilt stencil. It's available on a 20-yard roll in three different widths, and I'd guess it's available in most quilt shops. It's like tracing paper, but it seems to be more durable. I pinned and repinned the paper, stuck tape on it, rolled it and rerolled it, and generally abused it in the quilting process, and it never tore. However when I was ready to remove it, it tore off very easily and cleanly. It even came off pretty easily in those tight places where there was a concentration of stitches.

Here's how I did it. I chose a design from Electric Quilt's Quilting Designs series. After I drafted the log cabin into my EQ program, I imported the quilt design and sized it to fit my blocks. Then I printed out the design and traced several sequences of the pattern to create a small continuous-line pantograph. Next I pinned it to my quilt ready for quilting. Because the paper is translucent, I could see exactly where I wanted to position it. The pins poked me too many times, so I switched to double sided tape which worked just as well.

I used a walking foot to quilt the design, which meant I had to pivot the quilt round and round to stitch on my line. It might have been tedious except that I got pretty engrossed in it. I suppose you could do this on a larger quilt too, but if the quilt were too big it would more difficult to roll it up and maneuver around the needle. Free motion quilting would probably make it much faster.

This method worked so well for me that I'm excited to try it again, so I dug out the Pineapple Blossom quilt to work on, which will also measure 24" x 24".