Wintry Mix

I started the first prompt for Project Quilting this year with a literal clean slate: a blank canvas that has been sitting in my works-in-progress bin just waiting to be wrapped in a quilt…

I’ve had a beautiful little collection of Carolyn Friedlander fabric scraps that I received as a generous gift from another quilter, and like the blank canvas, they’ve also been sitting waiting for “the right time” to use them. I was actually hunting through my fabric collection to find the piece of fabric that I have had for the longest for a different prompt for WONDER YEAR on the Quilty Nook, and while these scraps aren’t the oldest, they are “the good fabric” that I’ve been hesitant to use, so they felt like the perfect material for this clean slate challenge.

Here’s my finish:

Title: Wintry Mix

Machine pieced, hand quilted and wrapped on canvas

12”x9”

I love wintry colors and landscapes - dusty blues and whites and straw colors - so that is the theme I went for with this piece (a subtle nod to the Pantone Color of the Year). I pulled and intuitively pieced together scraps from the pile that reminded me of winter. Interestingly, I started with the bright red/orange scrap, which doesn’t remind me of winter, but in the end it feels just right - it almost reads like the warm fire/hearth in a similar way to a classic log cabin block - and I love a toasty warm fire in the winter!

I hand quilted the piece with white and sparkly silver thread, thinking of icy winds and snow

And my big triumph was wrapping the quilt onto the canvas! I’ve wrapped pieces on canvas before, but never with much finesse, and something always seems to hold me back from taking the time to learn a proper technique. This project felt like a great time to do that, and I pored over Kelly Spell’s tutorial for how to mount a quilt on canvas until I felt ready to give it a go!

This was a very low stress, relaxing, ease-ful start to my Project Quilting journey for the year - last year I started things off with a very ambitious Snallygaster quilt and barely finished in the week deadline! I’m happy to take a slower and more peaceful start this time around.