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"

Quilting Friends

 Created for Project Quilting 14.4 - A Novel Project.

For my inspiration book, I chose The Quiltmaker’s Gift by Jeff Brumbeau and Gail de Marcken. My friend, Mary Lou, gifted this book to me for Christmas, 2002. It is a wonderful children’s story with amazing illustrations. I chose to make a friendship star quilt since one is shown on the page where the quiltmaker throws the quilt out the window to keep it from the king. And it also honors the many wonderful memories of the hours I have enjoyed quilting with my friend, Mary Lou.

As a side note about my week. Pip (my third granddaughter, age 11) had a big basketball tournament this weekend. I finished the binding on this quilt this morning while travelling to watch her play and took this picture in the parking lot between games. So, instead of my usual wood floor, this one has the blacktop parking lot in the background. I am so blessed to have 6 amazing grandchildren in my life. Every one of them is a special gift.

Created by Diane Lapacek near Poynette, WI
14" x 27"

Disappearing Fight

Created for Project Quilting 14.3 – 54-40 or Fight.

I started by drafting an 18" 54-40 or fight block. I wanted to strip piece the components of the block and felt this size was big enough to accommodate that. I put together one block with thoughts of possibly 3 to make a table runner.

The completed block didn't excite me. 54-40 or fight is a really cool block that can be used in amazing designs by alternating it another block. No time or place for that here. So I decided to layer my one block and quilt it and call it a day. Before I had a backing picked out my husband, Frank, came in and I quit for the day.

As I was waking up the next morning I had a thought of cutting up the block and putting it back together. This sounded more like how I might approach a challenge.

                            

Since my block was based on 3 and 6 inch units, I decided to cut it into 4 1/2" squares. so I started at one edge and cut. When I got to the center, I was 1/4" short of the seam, so I cut the seam out and continued across, then rotated 90 degrees and cut again.

I rearranged the piecees until I found something I like ad sewed them back together. This method reminds me of the disappearing nine patch technique, so I named it Disappearing Fight. It seems appropriate since the matter the block name refers to was solved without a fight.

Created by Diane Lapacek near Poynette, WI

16" x 16"

Argyle in Pink

Created for Project Quilting 14.2 – Pink Tint challenge.

As I pondered inspiration for the Pink Tint challenge, I looked for something not too taxing. My brain seems to be on winter break lately. I remembered the Argyle Answer, created for Project Quilting 9.2 - Triangulaton Challenge.  Pretty easy and I really liked it.

So much so, in fact, that I made Illuminating Argyle for Project Quilting 12.1 – Illuminating + Ultimate Gray challenge.

I decided to change it up a bit for this one by making it smaller and the white diamonds half size. What was I thinking! My brain was forced to abandon its vacation and go to work. This took twice as long as it should have and I don't think it's different enough to justify the extra time. Live and learn.

Created by Diane Lapacek near Poynette, WI

14" x 31"

ONE!

Created for PQ 14.1 The First One

So many ways to make this theme work. 

    Number one quilt finish of the year.

    Number one challenge quilt of the year.

    Number one PQ quilt of the year.

Easy peasy. Whatever I can make anything work! I was doing some minor winter cleaning in my fabric room. Yes, it's a room. I have been on the stash reduction project for many years. That means I only buy fabric if needed for a CURRENT project. I make several big quilts every year and I still have a fabric room......!!!!!?????

Anyway, I found a stack of pretty cool hand dyed fabrics that I thought I should find a use for. It occurred to me this was the perfect thing for a One challenge. I would use One amazing piece of hand dyed fabric and converge it using the Ricky Tims technique. So I started with this one. 

I decided to use half because it was already Thursday afternoon and I had more things to do in the next couple days.  After all, grandkids are always more important than anything, even quilting.Also, this size will make a great table runner.😀 So I picked half, cut it down the middle, flipped one half because I could and converged it using Ricky Tims technique. I could have converged it in the other direction, too, but this is the challenge of one, after all. I added simple quilting in diagonal lines and bound it using the same fabric. 

Created by Diane Lapacek near Poynette, WI.

17" x 34"

Easter Egg

 Created for PQ 13.6 Flying Geese challenge. 

Of course, I did flying geese for 13.5. So my challenge this week was to find something new to do that would work for the remaining space on my hallway wall. It needed to fit next to that 8.5 x 11 piece I did for the last challenge. And since I never want to make pieces that will hang side by side the same size, it needed to be smaller. Why not the same size? Because if they're not hung perfectly, it's really obvious. Precision hanging is not my superpower. Why invite frustration if you can avoid it?

I thought of geese in the round, but didn't want a square. Not the right fit for the space. Maybe an oval with geese in spiral. After sketching, I decided on 2 spirals going outward with lights and colors reversed on the second spiral. 

Not the most fun paper piecing I ever did. Some of those pieces are really small. Also, I will confess, this is not one of my favorite pieces. In retrospect, I think only 2 colors, or 4 with 2 on each spiral would have been more dramatic. No, I am not going to make another.  And, note to self, when you sketch something kind of complicated, always make a copy of it before you cut it apart to paper piece.

Many times with these challenges a name for the quilt has popped into my head early in the process. Not so this time. Not a clue. As I finished it, I thought it looked like an Easter egg. So Easter Egg it is.

I have been staging the PQ 13 quilts together on a spare bed. I forgot to account for the light switch, so my planned arrangement went out the window. Finally I ended up with this. A great memory of this season of Project Quilting. 

Created by Diane Lapacek in rural Poynette, WI.

7" x 10"