Another Friendly Challenge

I haven’t written a blog post in ages, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been busy with lots of different projects! Let me get you caught up with this particular one.

My sweet friend Kimberly Einmo and I have been working on a Friendly Challenge, in which we both make “parts” of a quilt with the same Cherrywood fabric pack, then exchange “parts” and finish the quilt. It really is a challenge, because we have very different styles, and it stretches both of us. But it’s fun! We don’t have deadlines, and the “rules” are pretty simple – start out with the same pack of fat quarters from Cherrywood; choose two extra fabrics, and some accent fabrics, if desired; make our agreed-upon part; exchange parts, and finish the quilt to 54″ square.

You can read about our first exchange here. I think the resulting quilts are pretty fantastic!

Next, we decided to forego the 54″ size and make quilts for last year’s Cherrywood  Lion King challenge. You can read about those quilts here and here.

Now we get to our most recent challenge. It was my turn to choose the fabric pack, and the purple-y blues in this pack called to me.

Unfortunately, I seem to have missed seeing the taupe-y tans and grays also in the pack. And the actual fabrics are more gray and less purple than this photo. Not my favorite colors! Not Kim’s favorite colors, either! Now this was a challenge! We had decided to each make a 24″ block for our exchange. I pulled some fabrics, and fortunately had this lovely print that worked beautifully with the hand-dyed fabric. I also added an ivory almost-solid, and a couple more Cherrywoods (in the end, I did not use the marigold-colored Cherrywood, replacing it with a rose-colored fabric.) I had a Zundt lily embroidery design that I knew would work well with the print fabric, so chose machine embroidery threads, as well.

I had never drafted nor sewn a mariner’s compass before, but had wanted to try my hand at one for a while. This was the perfect opportunity! So I got out my protractor and compass and freezer paper, and drew my first mariner’s compass! The points are paper-pieced. The center blue circle is machine-appliqued, as are the rose and blue bias strips near the outer edge. I was very pleased with how it turned out!

Next, I embroidered the lily in the center. Because the petals of the embroidery flow over the piecing, the embroidery must be done after the entire piece is put together. There is no room for error in placement or embroidery!

If you read the post about our first challenge, you’ve seen a photo of the quilt up to this point, as well as Kimberly’s Lone Star center block. We were so happy to be able to make this exchange in person!

I took Kimberly’s Lone Star home, and she took my mariner’s compass. I had an idea fairly soon, and it involved making some partial Lone Star blocks. I left lots of open space in the quilt top for embroidery, of course!

The acid green swirls (stitched to hide some of those yucky gray-tans!) are from Lindee Goodall, and the rest of the swirl embroideries are from emblibrary. (Please don’t ask me the design names and numbers – I just don’t remember!)

Here is the quilt after quilting!

I had to add some Zundt machine-embroidered lace to the edge, of course.

My quilt has been done for a while, but Kimberly (who is a VERY busy, and much-loved quilt teacher) was stuck on those grays. You can read about her challenges with this quilt on her blog.

A few days ago, she sent me a photo of her finished quilt top! Isn’t it fantastic?!

I can’t wait to see it quilted!

The colors for our next set of quilts has been chosen, and I’ve been trying to find just the right color of light green… And the challenge goes on!

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