Craftsy's Blocks of the Month for February

Balkan Puzzle and Chevron Bocks

It took me a day to complete the two blocks for February's Block of the Month taught by Amy Gibson on the Craftsy website.  The first block is the Balkan Puzzle.

I selected the fabrics out of my existing stash.  The most challenging part of constructing this block was making sure the placement of the units was correct.  Otherwise, it was a breeze to put together.

The theme this month was half-square triangles.  I'm quite proud that most of the points matched.

The second block is the Chunky Chevron.

The fabrics for this block also came from my existing stash.  Again, getting the placement right was pretty challenging.

Now looking forward to what's in store for March!

Cheers, everyone!

The IMQG February Quilt Challenge

Foundation Pieced Miniature

February has been an eventful month because Son #2, Pran and Robyn, were married on Febrary 11th, at Harvard Chapel in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  It was a small wedding that was planned and flawlessly executed by Robyn.  This was probably the best weekend we've spent away from home in a long time because everyone was so happy for Pran and Robyn :) 

It was an exceptionally heavenly weekend for me because we stayed at The Charles Hotel in Harvard Square.  Art at The Charles consists of regional art in America with an emphasis on New England culture, namely quilts which were on display on every floor (10 in all) of the hotel.  I was in quilters' heaven and spent any spare time I could examining them!  My only regret was that we didn't have our camera with us, so no pictures to show for it.  Each and every room had patchwork quilts on the beds.  Take a look at

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Quilts_in_the_Charles_Hotel for a very small sample of the quilts at The Charles Hotel.

On to the main event - The IMQG February Quilt Challenge!

Rules:

Make a mini quilt, no smaller than 6" x 6" and no larger than 24" x 24".
Use only scraps. No new fabric should be used.

Theme:
The quilt should say something about the most memorable holiday that you ever took whether it was 2 or even 25 years ago!

Deadline :
28th Feb 2012.

Here's my story.

My husband and I had taken a road trip of Alaska in the autumn of 2006.  We flew to Anchorage, rented a car and drove to Denali Park and other beautiful places.  The view of Mt. McKinley from Denali Park was pretty awesome!

To memorialise this vacation, I decided to use a foundation-piecing pattern I had squirreled away for over a decade.  Unfortunately, a picture of the pattern cannot be provided because of copyright restrictions.

Scraps left over from the January IMQG challenge were staring me in the face, so I decided to use some of them to create an autumn landscape of Mount McKinley in Akaska.  The blue fabric is the only one not used in January's quilt.  I wish I had a lighter blue fabric for the sky, but since we had to use left- over scraps of material, I settled for this one from my stash.  Besides, the autumn skies at Denali Park were an incredible blue!

My miniature quilt measures 8-1/2 by 8-1/2 inches.  It is my first art quilt and I've become very attached to it over the last couple of days.  It is very simply quilted 'in-the-ditch' because I haven't the nerve to try free-motion quilting.  I've signed up for an online workshop with Craftsy to learn the craft and after a lot of practice, may try it on this quilt sometime in the future.

Once the fabrics were all sorted out and decisions made as to their placement, it took me exactly four hours to foundation-piece the top.  Take into account all the reverse sewing (if you get my drift) and fabric pieces that were chopped away by mistake, I'm surprised it didn't take longer!

Another couple of hours spent layering, quilting and binding  this little quilt and it was ready to hang and be admired!

Let me again give thanks to The India Modern Quilt Guild for inspiring me to try my hand at art quilting.  I love belonging to The IMQG and look forward to the next challenge!

Cheers, everyone!