Michael Miller Fabrics partnered with the Modern Quilt Guild to create a challenge for QuiltCon. The company donated fabric from the Madrona Road line to each quilt guild that wanted to participate in the challenge! I think that’s pretty generous.Michael Miller Fabrics and Violet Craft (the designer of the fabric line) will be picking some of the entries to display in the Michael Miller Fabrics booth at QuiltCon. The photos must be uploaded to the flickr group by January 31st, so I had a bit of a time constraint to complete my project.

I had such a hard time deciding what to make for this challenge. I knew that I wanted to make a mini-quilt because that has been on my list for a while and what better opportunity than with free fabric? I finally decided to try out Jeni’s Flagged Quilt that I have been dying to make. This quilt uses half-rectangle triangles. I used a combo of her directions and the Modern Quilt Guild’s directions that she links to for my quilt. I didn’t want my quilt as big as hers so I cut 5×7 inch rectangles. This is a super quick and easy quilt pattern! Once I got started, I just couldn’t stop because it practically flew together.

For the backing, I rearranged some of the leftover triangles to form a different pattern and surrounded them with my remaining fabric in large blocks. I used the fabric given to me plus some Kona White and Charcoal.

Quilting: I debated for a while about the quilting but ended up using the same loopy quilting technique that Jeni used in her quilt. It’s a fairly easy free-motion quilting technique so it’s perfect for a beginner like me. Except for the fact that I had only completed about 1/4 of the quilting and the timing went off on my machine. I am not sure what happened, but somehow I must have jammed it and then yanked the fabric. 😦 I was so upset- this close to finishing and my machine is down and out! I have some nice friends though and one of them let me finish the FMQ on her Bernina. (And can I say that I now have my Bernina fund started because that was the most fun I have ever had while sewing!! There really is a huge difference between my machine and that one!). The repair man was able to fix my machine quickly so I had it back within 48 hours and finished the binding last night.

I wasn’t sure what I would use for the binding because (I thought) I had used up every single scrap of fabric given to me, but when I was cleaning up from the quilting, I discovered more fabric on the floor! Perfect! Just enough to make my binding!  I guess you could call that a happy mistake.

I am loving this quilt. It was lots of fun to make. (Other than the machine breaking part of it…grr) I don’t have any hope of it getting picked for the challenge but it was good to make something just because, and now I have a mini-quilt for my sewing room wall! The finished quilt measures 25×25.