Finally sharing my finished quilt for the 2016 Michael Miller Fabric Challenge!

I love a good challenge, and this was a tough one! From the new Luxe line of 108″ wide back cottons, I received a piece of Tumble Blocks in Lagoon, as well as a Luxe solid in Luna. I adore the colors, and the fabric is so soft, with a subtle sheen.

I’m a big fan of letting the fabric tell me what it wants to be. But sometimes, the fabric just doesn’t want to talk. After spending some time with it, I was feeling pretty stuck. So I decided to take a risk and deconstruct the print. I cut the fabric into the different sections of colored stripes, and was left with a pile of squares, diamonds and other odd shapes.

Welcome to the point of no return.

I started playing with the small cuts of fabric and… Ding! Finally! Inspiration!!! I decided to use the stripes of different shades to create the illusion of dimension and shadow. I created a paper piecing pattern, which ended up being very helpful when working with such small (and slightly slippery) pieces. It also made angling my stripes considerably easier.

A lot of my fabric pieces were so small that I had to join them together to create a large enough piece for the block. Just call me Dr. Frankenstein.

I challenged myself to only use the fabric provided (along with a coordinating Michael Miller solid from my stash), so I knew that whatever I made would be small. This bad boy comes in at a whopping 16 3/8” x 16”. So little!

I made as many pyramid blocks as I could with the fabric I had, and then started playing with a layout. In the end, I decided to stack them to one side and use the solid as a background and binding.

I used three coordinating shades of Aurifil 50wt for the quilting, following the angles of the HSTs. Matchstick quilting is labor-intensive, but it’s so worth it! This was the one time during this process that I was happy to have such a small quilt to work with.

This was a fun exercise, and I’m pretty pleased with the final result.

OH! And did I mention that this quilt was accepted into QuiltCon?!?! I kind of can’t believe it. I spent a good while waiting for an email saying they had made a mistake. It’s not perfect, but I love it and I’m happy to share it with this awesome community. And I’m proud of myself for getting over the fear of entering a quilt show! I only wish I was going to QuiltCon this year so I could see it in person.

So there it is, my little blue baby. I’m thinking I may need to make a throw using this quilt block now.

Have a great day! And if you’re heading to QuiltCon, I’m incredibly jealous and plan to live vicariously through your Instagram feeds ;)

xoxo