Show It! Red and White Challenge

Today I'm posting my work for Sew Cal Gal's Red and White Challenge: Show It Part 2: You made it! You designed it!.

The quilt is still in progress. Life is busy as usual, and I've had a few set backs as you'll see, but I'm determined to finish this thing. My current plan is to finish it by October 25th and enter it in the Handmade Christmas Challenge as well, since it has a Christmas theme. Here's the quilt I designed and made myself for the challenge. It's a variation on the Drunkard's Path block, inspired by a class with Pepper Cory. You can read about the design and making of the quilt here.

I've named the quilt Holiday Happiness. I'm hoping that's not just wishful thinking.

Holiday Happiness

I still have more quilting planned for this, but I'm a slow quilter and just couldn't finish in time. I plan to bind it in the red and white stripe fabric I used for the ribbons, cut on the bias. I just started quilting the border, and I have embellishments planned for the center, so please do come back to see the completed product.

I mentioned a few set backs... The tension on my machine seems to be going out about every thirty minutes. It's an old machine and I need to take it in, but I've just been too busy, so that's slowing me down. I have had to unsew some sections of quilting because of this. Then, today I wanted to remove the water soluble blue pen marks so that I could get a better picture of the quilting. I spritzed the quilt with water and... you guessed it, two of the fabrics bled. Now mind you, I had prewashed the reds with a color catcher, and I had used these same fabrics in other quilts before without a problem. (I was using up some scraps.) But today, this is what happened.

Red bled ornament :^(

I don't know if you can see it well in the picture, but there's a pink halo around the center star and around the ornament. So, once the quilt is bound, I will attempt to wash and remove the halo. I'll let you know how it goes! More to come...

But for now, I'm entering this quilt in the Sew Cal Gal's virtual show. Be sure you check out all the quilts there - there are some really great ones - and vote for your favorite by October 24!