Riley Blake Challenge Quilt

Like most people that I talked to, I struggled to find inspiration for this challenge. The fabrics were difficult for me, but I dug deep into my sketches of quilt ideas and pulled out a quilt design that I thought would work well. I have to say, I'm pleased with the results. Sometimes it takes a challenge to get you to push your boundaries. 

I'm calling this quilt, "Shootin' the Breeze" because the pinwheels look like they're spinning in the wind. 

I designed this paper pieced pattern a while ago and pulled it out for this challenge. I struggled with how to quilt it. Originally I wanted to quilt each pinwheel individually, either with custom quilting or with a spiral around each to emphasize the movement. My swirls aren't the greatest, so after I unpicked my first attempt, I went back and did some wavy lines to make it look like the wind was blowing. 

This quilt finishes at 35" square and will make a nice wall hanging or table topper. I used So Fine! thread for the quilting and Quilter's Dream Cotton for the batting. 

Riley Blake Challenge Quilt Top

The Christmas break was nice, I didn't have to worry about work or school, so I could spend lots of time quilting. In addition to finishing my Confetti quilt, which I'll show as soon as I can get a few good pictures of it, I also got most of my MQG Riley Blake Challenge quilt finished. A few more hours here and there this week and I managed to complete the top of my quilt.

I added in a solid purple and orange to go with the blue chevron and the orange dot. I plan on using the gray and white stripe for the binding. I did order more of the charcoal solid from Riley Blake for the background, but the rest pretty much was from the bundle provided. I did steal my aunt's blue chevron fabric since I needed a bit more of that because I didn't want to change the direction of the fabric.

After I finished the top, I realized the blue chevron fabric really gave the pinwheels a lot of movement, a very pleasant surprise.  Now to think about how to quilt this bad boy up. Hmmmm...

Linking up to WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced.