My challenge quilt

James Stitching Sisters has a challenge once or twice a year. The one that ended Sunday involved taking a bolt of fabric to use in a backing, then make a quilt top to go with. The bolt fabric had to appear in any amount on the front. Part of what I also remembered was, do not bring the bolt back to the Center; if there's some left, cut it up to use in other JSS quilts, make more backings, etc... you get the picture. Just don't bring it back.

Of course, I took the prettiest bolt of those I could choose from. It just happened to be a nearly-full bolt, and I now have about 10 yards left. With a couple of more backings and bindings and a scrappy quilt or two added in, I should be able to finish this up sometime in the next decade. ha!

So, here is the challenge quilt I delivered Sunday, the deadline. (I love deadlines!) I hadn't planned to use that much of the challenge fabric on the front, but I sort of peter'd out on the design end here and just slapped on the borders after weeks of staring at it and trying to decide what I wanted to do. Part of my problem was in using those particular pinks & reds, which were in limited supply in the stash. I wasn't about to tear apart the blocks I had made in order to make it more scrappy.

another crappy pic from my LR floor

The quilt pattern is Winner's Bouquet by Terry Atkinson. It really was quite easy to put together--gentle curves and a couple of remembered tips from other bloggers helped me immensely along the way. In my 10 years of quilting, this is the first time I've used templates, but Carrie's tape idea worked so well on the templates I put it on all my rulers too! And Wanda's tip about stitching the end of the curve first was a lifesaver. I did stitch mine the opposite/ crosswise direction from the stitching line because at the time I remembered the process but not the specifics. It worked great. Thanks ladies!

We'll have a little banquet next week where all the challenge quilts are revealed, so I hope to have pics from that.