Disappearing Broken Dishes

Created for Project Quilting 14.6 – Conquer a Fear challenge. 

Trish, our PQ challenge mistress, says your project for this final challenge of season 14 must involve conquering something that scares you.

HMMMMM...... I'm no longer a young lady. As a matter of fact, I turned 71 in January. And my life is in a good place. I've got great kids who found wonderful life partners. And I have 6 grandchildren who are all PERFECT and the greatest joy of my life. 

I've been quilting a long time and haven't met a technique I haven't tried. Curved piecing, set in circles, hand stitched hexies. All comfortably in my wheel house. So I went looking for a block for inspiration. Broken Dishes. Maybe. After all, I've been famous for dropping things for a long time. Not sure how to conquer that fear, but here goes. 

So I made 3 oversized broken dish blocks. Since only 2 fabrics bores me to tears, I string pieced everything using a color scheme of blue green and white. 

Pretty boring. But when I was looking for inspiration I came across a tutorial by Pat Speth for a disappearing broken dishes block. Yes, I could conquer my fear by making it disappear!

I rearranged the pieces and put the blocks back together and made them into the final table runner. So much better. 

Created by Diane Lapacek near Poynette, WI

13" x 40"

No Squares Here

Created for Project Quilting 14.5 – Sew Not a Square challenge. 

My first thought was to do something with triangles. Maybe equilateral triangles or flying geese. I went so far as to sketch geese flying across my fabric, but felt I did that last year. Maybe circles. So I sketched a series of circles tumbling down a piece of fabric.

I went to my stash and found a pretty cool yard of hand dyed fabric. I ripped a piece down the length, then ironed heat n bond lite to part of the remaining fabric and cut my circle shapes, then placed them so that I could get enough contrast so I could see my circles tumbling down.

Created by Diane Lapacek in rural Poynette, WI.

14" x 36"