Triangle Collaboration Quilt–Project QUILTING Triangle Challenge Entry

The quilt I created for the final Project QUILTING Challenge of Season 5 was a true collaboration of my entire family.

I chose the fabric we were starting with.  I’ve been signing up for too many challenges (is that even possible?) lately and I knew I needed to incorporate another challenge into this one.  So – I chose the Hoffman Fabric Challenge and I added my piece to a piece of our gorgeous hand-dyed.  My initial plan was to make 100 4-inch Half Square Triangles (HST) using just these two fabrics.  But, I couldn’t do it.  I added a few triangles of green, blue and light pink…I just had to.  Also – the Hoffman Challenge maximum quilt dimensions were 40” x 40” so I decided to make my HSTs finish at 3.5-inches.  This gave me a little leeway if I decided I wanted to add a border or anything else to the piece later on. 

When I finished up the 100 HSTs I put them up on my design wall in different ways so the girls could see at least a few of the possibilities of what you can do by arranging HSTs in different ways.

Then, I brought them downstairs and had them move all of the HST blocks to the other wall.  I had to lay down a few rules to try to avoid the fighting potential of the two working together.  Once they put a HST block on the wall on the left only they could move it – not the other one.

 This first part went really well – no fighting.  Craziness!

So – here is what the first layout looked like.  It was time to step back and take a look.  As we all know – initial designs aren’t always the way we want to leave the quilt.  So – I gave the girls five chances to make a change to the blocks.  They couldn’t change something their sister just changed, but they could do whatever they wanted.

Miraculously, this actually worked.  There was no fighting…in fact…they actually worked together making some of the final change decisions!  I was so impressed and proud of them!

 The girls were in a silly mood when they finished putting their design together. So..I included two pictures of the designers with their quilt  one that Cedi looks semi normal and one that Capri looks semi normal.

I sewed the HSTs all together and kept the exact design they put together.  Let me just say – it’s really hard to keep a layout that is fairly random in the exact same randomness when you sew it together.  I snapped a picture with the phone on my camera and then referred to it as I sewed seams together and pressed them.

 The second part of the Hoffman challenge was to use sulky thread.  I decided that I would use three colors of the variegated threads – blue, purple and pink. 

Here is the triangle drawing my husband drew with the girls earlier in the week.  I knew I wanted to use this as the quilting on my quilt…but I scaled it up a bit.

 It’s not that easy to see but I used his drawing and did linear quilting on the piece.

With the purple variegated sulky thread.  I liked it…but…there were some pretty large gaps because of the large scale I chose to use.

 So…using the pink and blue sulky thread I filled in a bit with some arcs and circles.  The quilt feels much more sturdy to me now.

For the final touch I bound it using my ‘wavy’ flange to create a bit more movement.  I’m very happy with the final quilt I made for Season 5!  It was so much fun including the rest of the family in the design.  I’ve been running and participating in Project QUILTING since I started it in 2010 – EVERY challenge  – and my family has been so supportive and understanding when I just have to quick finish a quilt before we can go to dinner, or that on Sunday’s at noon, I need to be at the computer to get things going or help wrap a challenge up.  Having them be a part of a quilt, and being excited to be a part of the quilt was just a perfect way to wrap up Season 5. 

See what everyone else made for the Triangle challenge by checking out the Link up: Project QUILTING Link up

I’m also linking my piece up to GoGoKim’s SewJo Saturday!