It was such fun to go to my guild meeting on Tuesday night and see the way that our quilter’s rose to meet the challenge!!

As a reminder….these were the parameters…..

For this challenge, you will create a wall-hanging-sized quilt using your three initials to guide your design. One of your initials should represent the main color scheme, another initial should represent the name of a featured block, and the remaining initial should represent the theme or mood. Any of your three initials can be used for any of the design elements, but you must use all three.

First…. my finished offering…..

On the whole, I am very pleased with this quilt. I enjoyed learning about the Mariner’s Compass ruler and loved the circular quilting!! I am also happy with the Flanged Binding…..more about that to come!!

In this case, that binding finished off the quilt well. Without that pop of color on the sides, it would have just meandered off into nowhere!!

So, as a reminder….

F – colors….. Fuego, Flax Flower Blue, Fire Engine Red, Ferris Wheel & Fuchsia.

M – block – Mariner’s Compass

A – theme….. “Abbreviated”….. because the Mariner’s Compass blocks were simpler versions than normal.

By the way, I looked further at the instruction book for the Mariner’s Compass ruler and found ways to make it more detailed. Can’t wait to try it!!

NOW…..our guild really pulled out all of the stops for this challenge…..

There were 12 entries and each met the parameters and each one was SO different!!

The “Best representation of the theme” award went to this TINY piece from Mai…..

“Best Design or Technique” went to Pat…..

…and “Best Use of Color” to Rosie…..

Linda made a “Lover’s Tiff” block…..

Other entries included…..

I LOVE the Art-Deco feel of this last one!!

I truly enjoy our challenges and am excitedly looking forward to learning the next one due in June!!!

OK…..one item off of my to-do list!!

Come back next week and help me make a baby quilt for my niece!!

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Yesterday, we picked the fabrics for my challenge quilt and today let’s get the top pieced!!

I knew that I wanted to make five Mariner’s Compass blocks that would fit equally in a circle. But FIVE of them….how could I do that.

The answer was with a lot of trial and error!!

I started out using a compass to find 72-degree angles….

I added 10-inch circles to it….

….but realized that they didn’t fill enough of the space…

….so 12-inch Mariner’s Compasses it would be!!

The instructions for cutting and sizes are in table form and I kept looking at the wrong column My solution…. two pieces of Post-It Note bracketing the size needed!!

Time to start sewing!!

After lots of sewing, cutting, and ironing….

….one of the Compass blocks was finished….

Before long, all of them were finished and corners had been added to create squares….

Now came the hard part of filling in the background areas!!

I started by tracing the blocks onto the paper…..

….and looking for straight lines that I could start with.

The right side was relatively straight forward…

But, then I had to deal with the inset seams on the top left…..

It took a lot of pinning, ironing and thinking before I put on my “big-girl pants” and started sewing….

….but it didn’t turn out too bad…..

So now the top is finished…..

The plan is to quilt it in concentric circles. Come back tomorrow and I will show you my method of marking those circles and on Saturday we will quilt them!!

By Sunday, the quilt will be finished and we will look at all of the other entries from my guild!!

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Back in July, my guild issued an interesting challenge….

For this challenge, you will create a wall-hanging-sized quilt using your three initials to guide your design. One of your initials should represent the main color scheme, another initial should represent the name of a featured block, and the remaining initial should represent the theme or mood. Any of your three initials can be used for any of the design elements, but you must use all three.

Along with this description were links to websites that had Quilt Blocks starting with various letters and websites with Colors starting with various letters!

At first I was truly overwhelmed by all of the decisions that I needed to make, but after I found the pieced Mariner’s Compass block that I talked about yesterday, I knew that I was on my way.

You see, my middle name is Marie, so Mariner’s Compass was my starting point!!

Then I started looking for colors starting with “F”…..

I am a huge Fuschia fan so that was definitely one of the choices….

But then there was Fire Engine Red…..

As I looked further, I found Flax Flower Blue….

And look at this lovely purple called “Ferris Wheel…..

And finally, this amazing green called “Fuego…

And for a background, I found Flint….

So, now my “F” color palette was set!!

Now to pick the fabrics!!

There was a lot of this going on…..

….but I eventually picked all 16 fabrics….

Come back tomorrow and we will start piecing!!

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One of my favorite things about quilting is motivating others and helping them in their quilting journey. As part of this endeavor, I LOVE to present programs and workshops to groups and guilds around the world. All of my programs work well with Zoom meetings, and I would love to speak to your group.

You can find out more at this link…..