A Big Finish to Close Out 2017

“Mosaic Garden never looked so good!” That was one of several compliments I overheard last month when we unveiled the completed quilt from our Cut It Up! Quilt Top Challenge.

The end result of our Cut It Up! Quilt Top Challenge

The quilt started its life several years ago as traditional top, sewn by guild member and fabric sales rep Veronica Hofman-Ortega to highlight a fabric line she was selling at the time. She donated it to the guild to use as a learning tool to reinforce design ideas presented by Mary Kerr during a lecture and workshop in April. (Kerr specializes in antique textiles and recently wrote a book on incorporating vintage pieces into modern quilts.)

After a design session at our June meeting, we settled on Vista Mahan’s plan to refashion Veronica’s quilt top. (Check out all of the designs we created here.) Using Affinity Photo software, I digitized Vista's paper design and added sections of solid stripes to increase the overall quilt size. Then during a July sew-in, several members took a rotary cutter to Veronica’s top and reassembled it adding strips of white, yellow, red, blue, green, and purple. You can see each stage of the process below.

Beverly Herron volunteered to tackle the quilting on her longarm machine, and she chose a lovely design that mimics the mosaic swirls printed on the fabric. I finished the quilt with a bright yellow binding that really pops.

The quilting was done by ChattMQG member Beverly Herron

Our original plan was to donate the quilt to a Habitat for Humanity homeowner, but we were very ambitious this year and ended up with more quilts than Habitat had homeowners! So stay tuned for the final plan. Thanks again to Veronica for donating the original quilt top, and to everyone who helped design and assemble the remix.

Are you interested in reviving this challenge in 2018? Let me know in the comments!