A Prize

Several weeks ago, Kim from Kim's Big Quilting Adventure was looking for new blogs to follow and asked for suggestions.  She would draw from the responses for a giveaway.  Much to my amazement, I won!  It was my first time winning a giveaway and I was thrilled.  A week later, there was a nice little package in my mailbox.  It was a Luna Notte charm pack and a pattern to make a little bag from charm squares.  I love the bag pattern and plan to make a few, but meanwhile, I've been on a bit of a Schnibbles-fest lately, so I decided to see if I could make up one of my patterns with the Luna Notte. 

I have to make a confession here:  I've never owned any Three Sisters fabric before.  There are many lines out there that aren't really me, however, I am totally enjoying playing with fabrics that are not the norm.  It is pushing me out of my comfort zone and I think it is good for me.  The Schnibbles made with charm packs are the perfect way to explore, and Luna Notte was a perfect candidate.  Looking around online, it seemed to be a bit of an older line, and not readily available.  I considered combining with another new line, like Etchings or something, but then I hit paydirt and found another Luna Notte charm pack and some yardage at The Stitching Post --it is a shop in Indiana and I've been ordering from them off and on for years.

Now with the fabric sorted out, I turned to my growing collection of Schnibbles patterns, and flipped through them.  I decided on Winter White.

When I read over the directions, I discovered that Carrie designed it using another Three Sisters fabric line, so I guess "great minds think alike" or somthing like that.  Once the fabric I ordered arrived, it was a breeze to put together.  Most of it is large squares, you just have to make 36 flying geese of two different  colors, for a total of 72.  With the mini Fit to be Geese ruler from Open Gate quilting, they were a breeze.  The one change I made to the pattern was to cut the border stips wider because I knew I wanted to do this again:

Make a scalloped border.  I tired it for the first time on my January Schnibble pattern and I loved how it turned out, so I was eager to play with it agin.  This quilt seemed the perfect opportunity.

Here is the finished quilt.  I love how it came out.  It was lots of fun to play with fabric I don't normally choose.  Another way that I pushed myself was to bind it in a lighter color.  I don't normally do that, I prefer a darker binding, but when the border is black there isn't much other choice.  I also had needed to order some pink yardage because the charm packs didn't have enough pink squares for this quilt, so that was what I used.  I really like the way it came out, too, so obviously I need to challenge myself to not always do something the obvious way.

Mahalo Nui Loa to Kim for the prize!

Aloha,
JoAnne