Back in.. April? May? I received an envelope with six Michael Miller Petal Pinwheels fat eighths courtesy of the Modern Quilt Guild. I had loads of time to think of something to do with them, so I mulled it over as I watched challenge projects pop up in my blog reader and on Instagram. The day before the deadline I decided that maybe it was time to do something about it.
A few things that had held me back to this point. The first is that I’m not particularly creative; I copy well, but don’t often come up with my own quilting ideas, and I couldn’t think of what to make. Secondly, the fabric was cute enough, but I was mostly ambivalent about it. While other participants went out and bought more Michael Miller fabric to make a bigger project, I didn’t want to, because, as I may have mentioned three million times, fabric in Germany is really expensive, and because I didn’t feel like spending money on fabric I didn’t absolutely love. Thirdly, one of the fat eighths was a reddish-orange solid, and the challenge rules were that only other Michael Miller fabrics could be used, or alternatively, other solids. Have I mentioned that I hate solids? Hate solids. But the deadline was looming and my local quilt shop was having a sale, so I popped in and in addition to buying lovely, but completely unhelpful fabrics for this cause, I also bought a meter of Kona Snow (and hi, can I just say that I really don’t see why everyone is so gaga about what is essentially a white sheet?).
I’ve had this picture on my phone for yonks and a half; something I saw on Pinterest at some point and saved for future reference, and I decided to try something similar. Given the limited fabric at my disposal, I went for a table runner.
I vaguely relied on a method Jacqui Gering demonstrates in her Improvisational Piecing, Modern Design class on Craftsy* (affiliate link, see disclaimer below) to piece the angled strips, which mostly worked, though I did need to unstitch a couple of the strips and try again.
For the back, I pieced together the leftover challenge fabrics and bookended them with what little of the Kona Snow was left.
For the quilting, I quilted each section separately using a matching thread (mostly Aurifil), with straight lines echoing the shapes the strips formed. I didn’t have quite enough of the white for the binding, so I cheated a little and used the sashing fabric I used in my Dreamweaver quilt, which reads white. Speaking of binding, thank you to everyone who offered thoughts and suggestions regarding the binding question in my blog hop post. I haven’t replied to everyone yet, mostly because I suck. The overwhelming consensus was that no matter how tedious, nothing produces better results than hand binding, and well. Is this not awful?
Kiwi was giving me the stank eye as I was doing it. SHE KNEW. I give up on machine binding.
That said, the weekend after the challenge closed, the Germ and I drove down to the northern foothills of the Alps, just across the border into Austria. He’s training for a race around Mont Blanc (possibly I failed to mention that the Germ is as mad as a hatter) and needed to do some running in the mountains, so he set off early on Saturday morning and I met him halfway and then at the end of his route. There are worse places I could have been hanging out while unstitching the binding, right?
I’ve now finished re-binding (by hand, which I have to admit was not really that awful considering, you know, the alternative) and I am pleased with how this turned out. Sheleg helped.
She seems to spend half her day on top of it, so I guess I’ve passed her QA.
* An affiliate link means that I may get a commissions if you decide to purchase anything from the company I linked to, in this case Craftsy.com. I only recommend products and services that I use and love, so I know you’ll be in good hands.
Joanna
Carmit