Blogger's Choice Fat Quarter Bundle Challenge

I figured I should use some of my time off for some crafty blog reading time and came across the Blogger's choice Fat Quarter Bundle Challenge via Quokka Quilts. I've seen a few of the bloggers I follow creating their own bundles so I was excited to try my hand at it. I'm uber obsessed with 'novelty' fabrics and so I chose one I've been loving as the focal point Critter Community Brown Birds of a Feather:

From there I wanted fabrics that echoed the feather patterns and colours:

And a leaf print to pull out the tree element:

Then I just looked for colours/patterns I liked the look of with these et voila:

Here are the fabrics I used from (note to self - next time number selections on mosaic):
- Pure Elements Pure Orange Solid
- Crazy Daisy Yellow Rhythm
- Outfoxed Yellow and Olive Tossed Triangle
- Outfoxed Olive Fern Stripe
- Pure Elements Parisian Blue Solid
- Pure Organic Chartreuse Solid
- Pear Tree Bright Blue Waving Stripes
- Alien Friends Red Bubble Dot
- Critter Community Brown Birds of a Feather
- Get Together Green Hearts
- Mimosa Orange Chevron
- Anchors Away Orange Diamond Ikat
- Orange Crush Citrus Little Triangles
- Greenhouse Flannel Grass Buttonwood
(I didn't realize this was a flannel when i picked it for its leaf motif - oh well)
- Prince Charming Olive Green Scallop

Phew, that's the whole lot of them. That took a long time of testing out different fabrics to get this bundle and lots of searching to make sure I linked to the right fabrics. Now fingers crossed the judges like my selections.

Chevron Quilt

My little sister decided she wanted to make a quilt for one of her teachers, so I set out to try to find something simple she could tackle and fast enough to make that we could get it done in the 2 weeks notice she gave me (silly sister). We decided to keep costs down we'd do it in solids on the front and a solid piece of patterned fabric for the back.

She was inspired by a quilt she saw online in greys black white and yellow with scattered half triangles. It was beautiful but when we picked up the fabrics we forgot  picture and both of our goldfish memories forgot it needed 2 shades of grey. We came home with just yellow, off white 1 grey and black. The result wasn't great - too dark with either no contrast (the black & grey) or too much (the black & off white). It was a big pile of yuck on the design board and we had already sewn all of the blocks together. My sister went to work in a less than delighted mood that night and I kept at it trying to make it work. Then it hit me - I had seen a sweet pattern on Cluck Cluck Sew for a zig zag baby quilt that used up half square triangles, so maybe with a few tweak I could make something out of our mess.

I ran over to her shop and purchased the pattern - and was i lucky - she was having a half price sale one day only. i picked up 4 patterns while i was there (I'm a sucker for a sale) and within the hour was fixing up the quilt with this result (pre-quilted):

I echo quilted the zigs and zags and got it done just in the nick of time to machine sew on the scrappy binding using a decorative stitch and scrappy binding. Hew teacher loved it (she cried) and told her it was perfect for her baby's room as she was having a boy. I wasn't able to get any of pictures of the finished quilt myself so my sister took some on her iPhone before she wrapped it.

 

Mission complete. Mr Malcolm agreed.