Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Two for the HGTV Crayola Challenge

I knew I was doing Bonnie's HGTV Challenge quilt back in December, but I found out a couple weeks ago that a woman local to me was also making one and wanted me to do the quilting. It's pretty bright. OK, it's blindingly fluorescent! But I do just love these colors together. Here's how it works. HGTV sends each participant a crayon of random color. You get to select one other fabric color to add to it, and it must match to a Crayola color. She was given the aqua, and chose to add the grass green to it. She initially wanted just an overall stipple since it is a donation quilt. But thankfully I talked her into something more creative. This is the continuous pattern I devised for her. The fabrics hace swirls and leaves, so I copied these motifs to the quilting.
My CC got better with practice. It was a little harder since the strips and the sashings were slightly different sizes. Overall, though, I think it worked ok. I love the two borders; kind of simple, but nice. And who doesn't like leaves and tendril swirls??
The owner was very pleased with it, and agreed it was SO much better than stippling. She even showed it to people at 3 different quilt shops that she visited that afternoon after picking it up. I always appreciate the free advertising. Can't beat that. Plus, she left me another quilt to do for her.
Here is Bonnie's quilt. She was given the sea foam green crayon, and chose to pair it with chocolate brown. My photo definitely washes out the green a bit, but it's a nice pairing. The pattern is simple and leaves plenty of room for quilting...a pleasant and a daunting thing. Her quilt is considerably larger than I was expecting. It only needed to be 54"x70", which is what I thought I'd be quilting - a very manageable task for a couple of days. Afterall, these must be delivered by Feb 1. Yes, 10 days from now. The quilt arrived 4 days ago and is 68"x86"! Yikes-
As many of you know, I am furociously trying to practice feathers everywhere. And I mean EVERYWHERE. I chose to do much of the quilting monochromatically, brown on brown and green on green. But I wanted a little bit of crossover to give the quilt a softer look. The whoppingly wide outer border is definitely done in green, to help hide my oopses with the feathers. In hindsight, they are pretty good. I love the look of the twirly-whirly feathering. It's the darn corner tear drops that are the hard part. Message to self...get some teardrop templates!!!
The color crossover is shown below. As I CC'd the diagonally running squares, I also did pairs of swirls in the green on the brown. Similarly, as I feathered the 24 8" brown squares, I did a pair of leaves in the brown thread on the green fabric. There's also a row of vining leaves for the brown inner border.
Though I may have done a fair bit of cursing about various issues with this quilt, I am happy with how it turned out and hope that the recipient is too.
Be sure to look up the HGTV Crayola Challenge online and see how you can buy a raffle ticket too. You might win one of these quilts, and your proceeds will go to support the Ronald MacDonald House.

13 comments:

Brenda said...

stunning! Your work blows me away!

bingo~bonnie said...

I am sitting here drooling all over myself!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Girlfriend, I knew that you would do great and that you would help my deadbeat quilt come to life - and you did! You exceeded all of my expectations!!! It is the most beautiful quilt I've ever paid to have quilted and I won't even been getting to keep it or sleep under it! Waaaaah!

Just kidddin, at least it will help to raise money for a great cause - thanks BTW for the shout out on the Ronald McDonald House charity for us on the HGTV board!!! :)

TY, TY, Thank-You 1000 times for working my quilt into your schedule so that I could have it quilted by you instead of me trying ot do it myself on my machine - eeeuuu, what a mess that would have been! **I shudder** to even think about it...

Thanks for posting a preview for me to see!!! :) You just made my day!

Love from Texas! ~bonnie

bingo~bonnie said...

My husband David, just sat here and read this post with all your photos... and he said that it's obvious that quilting is an art and that you did an excellent job!!

he also said - WOW, you mean you have to give that away? LOL :P

...and this is the same man who walked by it a dozen times when it was on my dining room floor and told me more than once that it was the ugliest thing I had ever made!

True story. :P

~bonnie

marlene@ByTheSeam said...

The quilting is very nice. I really like the brown quilt. I was just thinking today that brown goes so nicely with so many other colors in a quilt and that quilt just proves it. Thanks for showing them.

Thearica said...

Hi there! I found your blog via Bonnie! I am the host of the Crayola Challenge and just love the quilting on both of these quilts! Somebody is going to be very lucky to win either of these quilts!!

I will be running this challenge once a year until the ladies tire of doing the quilts, which will most likely be never...lol

I draw crayons for them and mail them out...HGTV doesnt have any affiliation with the challenge itself. They just allow us quilters a wonderful place to play together. :)

This is the tiny straight to the thread about the raffle on the HGTV Quilting and Needlework Forum! I will be uploading photos of the finished quilts that have come in starting tomorrow.

http://tinyurl.com/yg62u8v

Emma said...

Never mind 'pretty good' - your feathering is fantastic! How did you do it? I know you don't like pantos or templates - did you just sew/mark the spine and go for it?

Kate North said...

Love the crossover idea - really softens the edge around those big borders...

Elaine Adair said...

THank you sooooo much for the great photos of your gorgeous quilting! I am continually practicing on my DSM, as a long-arm is not in my future, due to space. Those end products, taking a flimsy, to a work of art, are incredible. LOVE that the photos are excellent.

"It's not a quilt until it's quilted." Isn't it amazing how the quilting makes it stunning! 8-)

Mikol said...

Those both turned out great and your quilting on them is just stunning! You do great work.

Pat said...

Your quilting is really beautiful, and I enjoy your blog a lot. Thank you.

StitchSister said...

Stunning! A masterful job, as always.

Quilter Kathy said...

Wow! Your quilting on both of these is gorgeous! Makes me want to run out and buy a long arm machine! Love your continuous design on the first quilt especially!

Unknown said...

Amazing! Amazing! Amazing! I am a friend of Bonnie's and found your blog via her blog! I'm glad I did! Your work is awesome. I'd love to send some work your way. Better yet, maybe I'll bring it in person and watch an expert at work! Karen in Kentucky