I participated in the Modern Quilt Guild’s Michael Miller Fabric Challenge this year. We were supplied with a stack of approximate fat eighths (9″x22″ pieces of fabrics) of a line of fabrics manufactured by Michael Miller. We had to use at least one of the fabrics in our piece, and could add any other Michael Miller prints or solids that we wanted. I added the green, white, and gray fabrics, and used every piece of the supplied fabrics that I could. I chose to test my Star Puzzle pattern (more on that soon), and see what would happen when the background fabrics were varied. Here is what the piece looked like when I was almost finished piecing the blocks. I ultimately took the green corners out and replaced them with the gray background so they couldn’t pull as much focus.
I didn’t have quite enough of one of the fabrics (my piece was smaller than a fat eighth), so I had to choose where it went in the pattern carefully so that my camouflage piecing wouldn’t be as obvious. I feel like I did a pretty good job of that.
Then I quilted it very heavily, using my current favorite background filler. It’s a combination of McTavishing, headbands, and feathers, and I found the idea originally at LuAnn Kessi‘s Pinterest board last summer. It’s fast and fun and not boring at all like some fillers can be.
I freehanded the 8-pointed flowers just paying attention to the triangles they were sitting in, and it was a lot easier than I thought it would be. So add that to my toolbox! Yay!
As (almost) always, I matched the top thread to the bottom thread, so the quilting is very visible (for better or for worse) on the back. This one turned out really cool, I think.
I didn’t end up winning the challenge, but I got a really funky 36″ baby quilt out of it, I think. And I got to test my pattern, so that’s great too. Now I just need to finish up the original quilt using this pattern so I can show that to you!