Tuesday, August 14, 2018

Flew Away ++ Mini Quilt

I have a fun mini quilt to share with you today...Flew Away...


I made Flew Away for my local modern quilt guild's, the Greenville Modern Guild Guild, mini quilt challenge.

The challenge was to take a traditional quilt block that started with the same letter as your name (first, middle, or last) and modernize it.  The quilt had to be a mini size, no larger than 36" on any side.

I was looking through my favorite quilt block book Jinny Beyer: The Quilter's Album of Patchwork Patterns to find a good block when I stumbled on the beggars block.  It worked as my last name is Brickey.  The beggars block is a 9-patch block with butterfly-like units in the outer 8 squares.  Here is one full block:

 
To modernize the design, I started with a full design of 9 blocks, 3 blocks x 3 blocks (so 81 butterfly units) and used my Subtracting for Minimalism technique (which I will be teaching at QuiltCon) to selectively remove some of the elements for a more scattered, minimal, and random looking design.

I thought the design looked like some of the butterflies flew away and that is how the quilt got its name.

Each of the butterfly units finished at 3" square so I used paper piecing to get all of the little points to match.  I added a 3" border to help the design float on the negative space.  The quilt top measured 33 ½" and the quilt (after quilting and blocking) measured about 32".

For the quilting, I wanted to make a plaid using thread.  In each "stripe" I used Aurifil thread in 12 wt., 28 wt., and 80 wt.  I marked the center lines through the blocks (the thickest 12 wt. thread) and then used my walking foot to space the other lines.  It was a lot of straight line quilting but luckily the quilt was pretty small. 




All total, there were 15 mini quilts submitted for the GMQG mini quilt challenge and I got 2 ribbons :)  I won a judge's choice ribbon and the viewers' choice ribbon.  You can see all of the entries for the challenge here.







13 comments:

  1. Looks great! Your style is kind of visible :) which is cool!

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  2. Congratulations on the ribbons - well deserved. I love the design!

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  3. I really like the design and the pops of orange in the piecing and quilting, Cheryl. The quilted plaid creates a great texture and I like how the elements form different shapes across the quilt.

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  4. That's such a fun challenge! It's somewhat similar to one we did in our chapter. We were to use three initials to pick paint chips or fabric swatches beginning with the same letters as our initials. There were some interesting color combos! Your quilting is a fun experiment with thread weight. We don't have a local shop that sells colors of Aurifil, let alone different weights, so it would be tough to come up with such a nice assortment. I think it would be fun to play with thread weights like that though. I'm glad you won two ribbons! They are well-deserved. (applause)

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  5. Congratulations, Cheryl. I really like your quilt. Thank you for explaining your design process.

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  6. Congratulations! Very well deserved ribbons. I love the single pop of orange in the quilt.

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  7. It's such a beautiful quilt Cheryl and I am looking forward to taking this class with you. Thanks for the links to the other quilts as well. There were a lot of interesting quilts in the group.

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  8. Brilliant! Love the quilting, I'm definitely keeping it in mind for the future! Oh to be going to Quiltcon - it sounds like a great class! Congrats on the ribbons!

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  9. i'm so happy every time you win something, ! something about being nice for people to appreciate the people i so admire!!!!

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  10. Congratulations on your wins. The quilt is really creative and pretty. I love the plaid quilting design.

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  11. The technique sounds great. Would love to be at your lesson. Maybe next year :) The quilt is really fun and modern and totally beautiful. Those two ribbons are well deserved! Besides the overall design I love the orange pop. Enjoy your mini quilt! xo

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  12. Love this fun design and that pop of orange!! Congratulations, Cheryl! Very well deserved!

    -Soma

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  13. Congrats on the ribbons! I like the name and love the one pair of orange wings.

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Thanks so much for taking the time to leave a comment!