Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Robert Kaufman Charm Pack Challenge

A few months back, Robert Kaufman was offering up charm packs of Kona solids to Modern Quilt Guilds. The Baltimore MQG was all over it (free charm packs? challenge? heck yeah!) After a vote, we decided on the classic colorway. For classics, there were plenty of vibrant colors. 42 to be exact. For the challenge, RK basically let us make up our own rules, only asking that we post our finished quilts in the flickr pool. For our challenge, we agreed that we needed to use at least a little bit of each color and that we could use only solids. We also agreed to use a technique that was new or a challenge for us. My personal challenge was working with circles. I kinda feel I can rock the straight edges, but circles, not so much. This is my finished quilt:

To cut the circles, I first cut out a variety of sizes of cardstock with my Cricut, 4 1/2" being the largest, 2" the smallest. I traced about 60 or so circles onto heat and bond, then started cutting. A lot of cutting. I cut them out window pane style, so that just the edges would have the adhesive. Then, a lot of pressing onto the charms, and a lot more cutting! This is my little pile of leftover trimmings:

 After placing them on the black background (which I'm not sure I'll ever use again ~ I think it looks really cool, but it's soooo linty. This is going to have to be a wall hanging, because the cat hair alone will drive me nuts!) I fused them. Then, with invisible thread, zig zagged around each circle. Another challenge for me, quilting in a circle. This gave me lots of practice. Not even close to perfect, but I'm okay with it. I even tried some swirly quilting on the background.

I'm pretty happy with this. Lots of lessons learned. (like how about not waiting until the day before a challenge quilt is due to start cutting the fabric?!)

5 comments:

Paula said...

Great quilt. I love circles and have made several circle quilts! They are unusual and fabulous!

craftytammie said...

Heather, this is awesome! i have never tried circles - mine would look like amoebas. i loved this challenge - show & tell was so much fun, seeing how different & creative everyone's quilts were.

Little Island Quilting said...

Very effective - I like it a lot

Leanne said...

I really like your quilt!

Beth said...

Wow! This is beautiful! I love the colors that you used...very bright & cheerful.