Jo's Adventures in Quilting: Carolina Lily - Project Quilting Challenge 8.2

1/15/17

The second challenge for season 8 of Project Quilting was announced today at 11:00 AM Arizona time and I was online to find out what it was by 11:01. I had most of today free, but the rest of my week is incredibly busy so I knew if I was going to have any hope of completing an entry, I would have to get the majority of the work done today. I was really hoping that inspiration would hit me immediately because I would need to get started right away.

So I was doing a happy dance when I saw the theme/inspiration for this challenge was the Carolina Lily. Any other week, I might have tried to come up with something original featuring the gorgeous orange color of the flower. But knowing I was under a serious time crunch, I had no time to think or plan. Luckily for me, there is a traditional quilt block called the Carolina Lily and a version of that block is in the quilt (designed by Jinny Beyer for the Craftsy 2015 BOM) I just finished last month. It has been my plan all along to make a couple of throw pillows to go with that quilt so this was the perfect opportunity. I would make a pillow using the Carolina Lily block from the quilt!

I dug out the pattern, templates and fabric I used in the original quilt and found what I needed for this one block. I was making my first cuts of fabric by noon!

By about 5:00 the main part of the block was done and I added framing strips and setting triangles to put the design on point and make it big enough to be able to make an eighteen inch pillow.

At about 6:00 my quilt top was done and my wonderful husband announced dinner was ready. I was SO ready for a break. His timing was perfect.

After a quick but delicious meal (thank you Tom 💖) I was back in the sewing room to work on the quilting. No time to think about how to quilt it, so I used the same designs I used on the bed quilt. Which is fine since they are meant to go together.

By 9:00 the quilting was done and I was completely done in for the day! The quilting shows up way better on the back side.

I will be away from home for the majority of the day tomorrow and by Tuesday afternoon, my sewing room needs to make the transition to guest room in preparation for a visit from my sis-in-law, Lise who arrives Tuesday evening - flying in from North Carolina. How's that for a coincidental tie in to our challenge?

Hopefully I will be able to find enough free time before then to turn the quilt top into a pillow. Because Wednesday morning Lise and I are heading out to the Road to California quilt show in Ontario California and we won't be back until Saturday evening. So I really need to have it all done before we leave.

Stay tuned to see if I make it.

1/16/17

As I expected, today was a crazy day with no down time at all until well into the evening. Luckily I didn't really have that much work left to do. Just put on the overlapping panels to turn the quilt into a pillow sham and then add the binding. I probably could have saved myself quite a bit of time by sewing the binding completely by machine, but I've never been truly satisfied with the results when I do it that way so I stayed up watching late night TV and hand sewing the binding to finish it off.

Now it's done and just needs a name. My husband named the bed quilt Electric Garden because of the way the flower fabrics glow against the black background. So I think I'll call this

Electric Lily.