Wednesday, January 11, 2012

WiP Wednesday: Solids Challenge Blocks

The ECMQG is participating in the Kona Solids Challenge, hosted by Robert Kaufman (better late than never, right?), and we received the Brights charm pack.  This will be my second Solids Challenge, because I was a part of the LAMQG earlier this year when they participated.  I made this quilt for the LA challenge, and I still don't love it.  So I'm looking at this second challenge as a way to redeem myself and make something that I actually love!

I had one quilt totally sketched out.  It was going to be a Tetris quilt.  I even had a cute name picked out for it - the Game Over quilt.  But alas, I decided not to go with that.

I realized that on Pinterest, I had been pinning quite a few blocks that involved HSTs, and I've not worked at ton with HSTs before, so I took that as a cue that maybe I should do something with HSTs!  I came across this block, and decided try to make this work for the challenge.  After I did the math, I realized that I could make 3 blocks out of one charm pack.

At first I was going to go with Kona Ash as the additional solid, but when I thought about really loving this quilt (because it's going to stay with us), I wanted to use something that I really love.  And I really love linen!  So I decided to go with Essex Linen in Natural.  I had just enough of the right sized scraps to make up the neutral part of the blocks. 
So over the course of four days (one day was spent cutting all the fabric, then I did one block a day for the next three days), I finished the three blocks!  Here they are...





Now, I am not a student of art or color or even design.  Which means I didn't spend the time laying out the colors in any particular order.  That would've made my brain hurt.  So I just did the colors randomly.  Jessica's tutorial was great - very easy to follow.  And I really liked putting these together, although I'm glad I stopped at three.  Because they were way more time consuming than I'm used to.

I'm glad I went with the linen.  I do love Kona Ash, but I just wanted something a little more "me," and I think the linen is me.

Anyways, I don't know when I'll put the whole top together.  This doesn't need to be done until the end of March, but I wanted to get a jumpstart on it, since this baby could come anytime now!  I am excited to finish it, though, and I don't think I'll have the same dislike for it as I do for my other Solids Challenge quilt.

Linking up to WiP Wednesday!

WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced

5 comments:

  1. Very nice blocks! I love the solids!

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  2. Wow!! Good for you!! That is QUITE a lot of HSTs. :) Those blocks look great!

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  3. The brights charm pack has such great colors. And HSTs have so much potential. I'm sure you'll like this quilt much more than the last. You're already off to a great start.

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  4. Love the blocks! I'm glad the tutorial worked out for you and was easy enough to follow. They look great with solids. I might just have to try it sometime!

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  5. Wow! I just love this block. I used it for Christmas quilts for my quilty friends. It's so fun, but I agree very time consuming. I haven't done much with HST's either, but have been drawn to them this year.

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