Chubby Churn Dash Mini

Aurifil is hosting a Designer of the Month program, featuring little quilts that are fast to make. I didn't get around to the January program, even though it was by one of my favorite designers, Gudrun Erla (from Iceland!). February's project by Joanne Figueroa was cute though, and it showed up just as I was pondering what to do with the small remaining length of my background-neutral architectures yardage:

I can't get enough of this as a background -- from Carolyn Friedlander's Architextures line.

I just pulled out some scraps from near the tops of various heaps, because this pattern didn't need much of any one fabric. It took an evening to make the top, then another couple of sessions to do the spiral quilting. I did nine separate spirals, starting in the center of each block with a thread that matched that block. I did a little echoing around the edges using grey, because I didn't want the floppy edges that sometimes happens when you don't quilt evenly the whole way to the binding. Cute cute cute! I'm looking forward to doing the rest of these over the coming year.

Chunky Churndash mini -- 23 x 23" 

Close-up of quilted spirals on Chunky Churndash mini

Magic: The Gathering quilt

Special guest blogger today, my 11-year-old son Cedric!

I have been working on this quilt for about two months now after my Settlers of Catan quilt was over the size limit of the Vermont Quilt Show Festival, but I am very happy with how this quilt came out. It is based off of the game Magic: the Gathering, which I have a lot of fun playing and looking at the art of. I chose the border and back to look like the famed card Black Lotus, which gives you all five colors of mana, which are the five symbols on my quilt. The name, Alliance of the Planeswalkers, is inspiration of the Lorwyn Five, which are the five main planeswalkers of Magic. There is one for each color, and the silver background is meant to stand for colorless cards, mainly artifacts. The quilt is going to go onto my bedroom wall.

Cedric's Magic: The Gathering quilt (29" diameter)

Black Lotus fabric on the back of the Magic quilt 

(Note from Mom: He did this himself, the fabric planning, the measuring, the ironing, the cutting, the applique circles, the y-seams, and the quilting!! I helped only with digitizing and embroidering the symbols and with the binding. He's feeling some righteous pride!!)

Holly's green garden page

This is the last of the pages that I made for my art group's color project. Holly wanted a series of green "garden"-themed pages that she could hang in her three-season room; I worked a little off the page (so to speak) to make something that would take advantage of a partially outdoor space.

I started with a bunch of green scraps, mostly cutoffs from my Chopsticks quilt. I was very happy with how they came together, something like a labyrinthine path through a garden. After some squared-off meandering, I cut some crazy flower circles from a print and beaded & sequined the hell out of them so they would catch the light. Once those were finished, I attached them onto the background using springs so they would wiggle a little in a breeze. Also, I made a spectacular beaded spider using directions that happened to come across my Facebook feed at just the right time. After the binding was on, I added a beaded fringe with tiny jingle bells to make this a multisensory quilt.

Holly's green garden page

Close-up of Holly's green garden page, springs visible

Close-up of Holly's green garden page, beaded spider

I know a lot of people are tired of the snow that has been falling all month, but I sure am getting a lot of unexpected quilting done on these homebound afternoons. Back to work on the art group's Red project for February...I will have TWO to share at our next meeting for a change -- huzzah for snow days!!