Monkey Business

Yes, my previous photo is a little more artsy and interesting, but all the other submission photos for this challenge have been cropped to just a straight on view of the quilt alone, so that's what I'm going with too.

I already wrote about my inspiration and the process I used to make this quilt in more detail in earlier posts, but as part of the submission, we are supposed to share the story behind the quilt.  So I'm going to include some of that again in this post so challenge participants don't have to go searching for it.

I really enjoy improvisational piecing, So when the inspiration block was revealed as the Monkey Wrench block, I immediately decided my version was going to be wonky....like a monkey did it. Thus the concept for Monkey Business was born.

I had no real plan beyond that when I started.  I designed it pretty much on the fly, making some blocks and placing them on the design board and then figuring out how to piece them together.

Once I was finished, I wasn't completely satisfied with the result and I ended up picking apart some of the monkey wrench blocks and adding in more of the red and yellow fabrics.

Deciding on how to quilt a project is usually a challenge for me.  So when it came time to quilt this, I was very happily surprised to realize I already had a plan in my head.

My quilt has now been submitted along with the other finished projects from this challenge.  So far there are about twenty of them, all very different and unique.  As we are nearing the May 31st deadline, more are being submitted every day.   You can see them here.

This has been so much fun and such a great learning experience.  I am starting to understand why artists often work in a series.  As I was finishing this up, I had several ideas on how I might do it differently if I were to do it again and it would be fun to explore those.

I am looking forward to June 1st and our new challenge.

First Challenge Quilt is Finished

I didn't think I was going to be able to work on my challenge quilt at all this weekend.  Tom's brother Bill is visiting to help us celebrate Tom's birthday.  So my sewing room is currently in use as the guest room.

But when Tom and Bill went off to golf this morning, I knew they'd be gone for at least three hours.   I just couldn't help myself.  I managed to work around the sofa bed to cut and sew the binding strips and then I spent much of the afternoon completing the turning and handsewing.

I need to get a good photo for my official submission picture, but I took a few this evening as soon as I finished it while there was still enough light outside to see.  :-)

   

I'm so excited to have finished my first ever quilting challenge!

Making Monkey Business

Other than knowing I was going to name this quilt Monkey Business and that I would use some improvisational piecing techniques, I really didn't have any clear vision of how I wanted this quilt to turn out.  So I just started and pretty much designed it as I went along.

Challenge participants were required to purchase the ROYGBIV bundle  from Cherrywood Fabrics.   These are beautiful hand dyed fabrics with rich color and texture.  I have quite a bit of their fabrics already in my stash, but until now, they have been in that box of fabrics that are just too special to use.  Time to break out the box and cut into some of it.   We can choose any one of the colors each month as our focus color for the quilt, using all seven colors by the end of the 7 months. 

For no particular reason, I chose orange and found another orange in my Cherrywood stash.  

I started by making a few wonky monkey wrench blocks in various sizes.  I taped off a 20" square on my design board and played with block placement within the space until I came up with a layout I liked.  I realized I wasn't going to have enough of the light orange to complete the background area so I decided to add a "swish" of darker orange through the center. 

So now I had to figure out how to piece these blocks together while preserving the various angles I had placed them in.

I'm really not sure if I've seen this done before, or if I just figured it out on my own, but what I ended up doing was making a pattern by tracing the blocks onto a 20" x 20" piece of paper and then adding in seam lines where the various background pieces would need to be.

Then I traced each of those background pieces, adding a 1/4 inch seam allowance, onto freezer paper and cut them out.  I ironed the freezer paper templates onto the fabric and cut those out.  So now I had the pieces I needed to create the background.  

All that was left was to sew them all together.

Or so I thought.  Once I got this far, I liked it, but I just didn't think it seemed finished.  It needed......something.

My quilting mentor, Karen, always tells me to listen to my quilt and it will tell me what it needs. Well this one told me I needed to pick it apart and add more yellow and red to the monkey wrench blocks. 

I was not particularly happy about that idea.  Talk about a lot of work!  I am not at all fond of undoing the sewing I've already done.  I thought maybe I could find some other way to add in the additional color and I considered several options.. The quilt and I argued for about a week but in the end, the quilt finally won.

I spent a day picking out stitches and putting in new ones.   This is what I ultimately ended up with.

It is all quilted now and ready for binding.  As soon as it's done, I'll add more pictures.  Looks like I'll get this done just in time for the May 31st deadline and be ready for the new challenge starting June 1st.  

Starting a quilting challenge

I decided it's time to start stretching my quilting wings a little bit and try coming up with some of my own designs instead of following patterns all the time.  So I entered a seven month quilting challenge through Persimon Dreams/The Quilting Project and using gorgeous Cherrywood Fabrics. to give me some motivation and inspiration.

A new challenge will be issued each month for seven months.  Each month we will be asked to create a new quilt using a traditional block for inspiration and one of the seven colors of the rainbow.  A new block and a new color each month.  The inspiration block will be provided, we get to choose the color we want to use.  Each quilt should finish as a 20" square.

The first challenge was issued on May 1st.  The inspiration block was the "Monkey Wrench".  And since I really enjoy improvisational piecing, I immediately decided my version was going to be wonky....like a monkey did it.  Thus the concept for Monkey Business was born.

Here's a little peak at the almost finished project.

In the next post, I'll walk you though how I made it.