Inspiration: Audrey’s Modern Quilt Guild Challenge Quilt

This year for the Modern Quilt Guild Challenge, we were provided with 3/4 yard of Riley Blake’s Sashing Stash in black and white, and told that we could use any Riley Blake solids to coordinate with them.  I had lots of scraps lying around, leftover from making the new samples for our Mini Modern Quilt Pattern Bundle, that were dying to be used for this.  Black isn’t a color that we use very often, so I felt like I was stretching my usual creative process a bit.  (That’s a good thing!)  I just started piecing scraps, without taking much time to plan what I was going to do.

Sometimes, we want to have everything all planned out before we start, which can keep us from ever starting at all!  Piecing as I went was much more relaxing than trying to fit everything perfectly together from the start.  I love this about the modern quilting movement– nothing has to line up perfectly, which allows quilts to grow in a more organic way.

I had a lot of fun experimenting with the quilting on this little mini.  For the borders and corners, I did straight-line quilting with both the walking foot and free motion with my Bernina Stitch Regulator (BSR).  I like how straight the lines are with the walking foot, but using the free motion foot eliminates a lot of stopping and turning.  With a little more practice, I think I can get pretty straight lines (in small sections) with the BSR.  For longer stretches, the walking foot is definitely the way to go.

Here’s a textural view of the back.  You can see that I did straight lines in black thread over all the black and white strips.  Everything else was quilted in lavender thread.

For the scrappy flying geese in the quilt center, I did free motion quilting in all kinds of patterns, pretty much whatever I could think of as I was going along.  Some of them definitely turned out better than others, but it was a great quilting exercise, and I think it adds a lot more interest.  My favorites are the leaves, pebbles, and the one that I did like a snow-capped mountain.

The borders ended up with a fun Art Deco vibe, which I wasn’t planning, but I love how it turned out.  I used the half-square triangle strips from the Sashing Stash fabric for the binding, which didn’t work perfectly, but I think it adds to the overall look, tying in the black and white a little more.  Overall, this was a very fun skill-building project.  Since I did a mini quilt, it only took a couple of days to complete.  We love using a smaller project to try out a new technique or style, because it’s all of the fun without a huge time commitment!