Riley Blake Challenge fabric

First up I wanted to thank everyone for the wonderful, supportive comments that were left on my last post. After being so nervous about sharing my story, you made me so glad I opened up. Thank you.

Now back to the regularly scheduled programming….today I am thrilled to share two finished quilts that were made as part of the Portland Modern Quilt Guild Charity Sew days….

A fabulous group of ladies helped make blocks, piece and quilt these beauties which were made for local charity Camp Erin. If you are interested in making your own simple quilt like this check out my post about the block we choose for directions.

Finished PMQG chairty quilt 2

The block was so simple but really effective – we managed to get two large tops made in one day. At the same time we also managed to make sure that each top had its own unique flair.

For both these quilts we used the Guild’s left over Riley Blake Challenge fabric. We had quite a few of our Guild members share their left over pieces with us with some added touches – Rachel supplied the coolest airplane fabric, Michelle supplied the navy umbrellas and I raided my stash for some Pearl Bracelets in navy, yellow and grey.

Our two completed tops were then handed over to two of the Guild’s fabulous longarmers, Dawn and Jolene, who set to work weaving their magic.

For the backing we used some of the bigger pieces from the Riley Blake stash and I then add some scrappy binding for the finishing touch.

We now have two fabulous teen boys quilts done and ready to add to our growing collection of quilts for Camp Erin.

This week Paper Piecing Monday was usurpered by Portland Modern Quilt Guild’s Charity Sew Day.. sorry. I have decided on a new paper pieced quilt and have designed the first block for it, but have not had a chance to test the pattern… but I promise it will be ready for next week.

In the meantime I thought I would share some of the fun of yesterday… where a group of PMQG members took over one of the class rooms at Modern Domestic for the day and made quilt tops.

We had a collection of fat quarters and fat eighths left over from the Riley Blake challenge and our challenge was to make some quick and easy quilt tops out of them. Rachel from 2nd Avenue Studios and I spearheaded this adventure and we quickly settled on a modified rail fence and three of the fabrics from the Challenge – the yellow dot, the navy check and the grey stripe.

We supplemented the Riley Blake with some other graphic prints in our colour way, all boy appropriate, as our Charity needs teen boy quilts (yes I am the one that added the Pearl Bracelets!).

The pattern is ridiculously easy and very very effective. In a nutshell we…

1. Cut a generous nine-inch strip of our chosen fabrics…

2. Cut our nine inch strips into sections of 5 inch, 3 1/2 inch and 1 1/2 inch pieces. We made sure we had a variety of each colour in ever size.

3. Selected the strips for our block making sure there was one of each colour… then using a scant 1/4 inch seam we sewed the pieces together to get our finished 9 x 9 inch block.

You can easily build in some wiggle room with this block by cutting your fabric strips from your yardage at 9 1/4 inches wide (it is a little harder with fat eights, but with the fat quarter cuts we cut 9 1/4 inches from the 21 inch width).

If you are struggling to get a scant 1/4 seam allowance you can add some wiggle room the other way, by cutting 5 1/4 inch or 3 3/4 inch pieces… and then trim the finished block as needed down to 9 x 9 inches.

And viola you have a fun, easy but striking quilt top.

Thanks to everyone’s efforts we managed to get two tops finished yesterday… in between the socializing, laughing and cake eating. Not a bad way to spend a Monday I must admit.