January | 2013 | NW Quilted Cat

With the new year, I decided to stretch my sewing/quilting skills and join a guild. I signed up for the Portland Modern Quilt Guild since I have been intrigued by some of the modern quilt blocks lately. I have a link to the PMQG on the right sidebar of my blog.

I’ve been focusing quite a bit on applique and paper piecing so I’ll return to some traditional piecing techniques for my first modern quilt project.

The project will be for the Madrona Road Challenge – a fun challenge that uses the Madrona Road (Michael Miller) line of fabric by Violet Craft.

I visited a local quilt shop to pick up some fabric from this line, but they only had a few pieces to choose from. I did pick up 4 different prints and then a few solids for accents.

Here are the solids:

Madrona Road Patterned Fabrics

I could order more Madrona Road pieces from an on-line retailer, but decided to challenge myself using just the prints that I found locally. The other stipulation is that it must be a wall or art quilt no larger than 36 inches on any side and must include a word that inspires the quilt.

I’ve worked up some ideas for my challenge quilt and am using a word inspired by an image in the actual fabric itself.

Stay tuned . . . I’ll post a progress photo soon!

Happy quilting!
~Jennifer~

For New Year’s Eve, I decided to work on my mystery block-of-the-month for January 2013. Yes, one day before the official start of the year, but what a great feeling to be a little bit ahead!

My regular readers have been following my progress on this mystery BOM program designed by Carol Doak. You can still join her Yahoo group and get the mystery BOMs by clicking the link in the right-hand column of my blog. You can read about my November block here.

For the December block, the group made setting pieces rather than an actual block. I decided to wait on making my setting pieces until after the mystery is revealed, so I can decide if I want to use my 2 main fabrics or an accent color instead.

After this January block, there are 2 more blocks to complete. Then, the mystery will be revealed and we’ll learn how all the pieces fit together and how to finish the quilt top.

Here’s a look at my January block: