Madrona Road Challenge Finish

After mulling over it for a few months – we’ve known about the challenge for a while before we even got the fabric – Wednesday night I got my vision for my Madrona Road Challenge piece. It is pieced using the wonky nine patch technique which Oh Fransson explains really well here.

The Madrona Road Challenge is a national challenge with guilds across the US participating. There’s no “winner” but it’s a fun way to get folks thinking creatively. The Columbus Modern Quilt Guild’s guidelines were to do something on the Stars and Stripes theme, and have it at a max of 30×30 inches.

We were given 7 fat eighths to work  with and I used every last scrap. I had a few triangles left from the front and I used those to make the smaller star on the back.

The only way I may have deviated was that you weren’t supposed to add any prints that weren’t the Madrona Road line. I used a linen-look-alike fabric from Robert Kaufman that has the linen cross-weave drawn onto it, so it looks like a linen solid.

As you can see, it’s snowing really heavily right now – it’s so pretty out! I just shoveled my front step and it’s already buried. Such is life.

I ran out of fabric for the binding so had to sneak in some solid blue corners. I think I like the look! I hand-sewed the binding which I never do and it even took me a minute to remember how but I think it turned out. It is nice and puffy compared to machine sewn binding.

Matt came in while I was hand-sewing the binding and asked in great shock – “Why are you hand-sewing it!!!” I think he thought my sewing machine was broken. I actually enjoyed the process but I don’t think I’d do it for a larger than 30×30 quilt.

Once again, I think I might like the back more than the front!

To see the other awesome quilts that folks are making for this Challenge, check out the flickr pool – it’s already making me re-think my choices! I love them all!