Red and White Challenge Quilt

title: All I want is red, wah, wah, wah...

creator:  Colleen Charlotte Yarnell

location:  Lewisville, NC

Date:  January 2012

Challenge:  Create a 36"-48" red and white quilt for the Forsyth Piecers and Quilters March16-18 2012 Quilt Show Challenge

Inspiration:  I love the swoon-along happening online in blog land.  It inspired me to create a 24" red and white swoon block.  Then using 3" blocks as the basis for the rest of the quilt created my favorite star blocks.  A 12" wonky star, a 9" Friendship star, a 6" Free hand star, a 3" whirly-gig star, and a 1" pin wheel.  The title comes from the song I would sing in my head as I searched for red and white fabrics in quilt stores.  It was hard to findfabrics with JUST red and white and not a touch of block or yellow.  And there are so many different shades of reds!

Here are some photos documenting the construction and quilting.

Piecing the Swoon block.  I use my Marti Mitchell templates.

Friendship star

Wonky star

Freehand star

Pinwheel and Whirly-gig Star

Laying out blocks to figure out placement.

Piecing the back with leftover fabric.

I machine quilted each of the blocks differently.  I used a pebble quilting for the wonky star points.  

And here are some close ups of the quilting.
I
I used just a little bit of the variegated thread with the tiniest block.  It makes it look as if it is blowing in the wind.  I like how it gives the whole quilt the look as if the blocks are being tossed in air.

The rest of the red background I free motioned quilted with my Sofia last Sunday in a tiny loop.


At the bottom of the quilt I put a piece of Kumari Garden. 

 I love this large scale read and white print.  I decided to do some hand quilting here. 

 I wrote 'read and white red and white' in chalk and then signed Colleen Y.  

I quilted over it using red pearl cotton. 

My only problem was the chalk was not easy to remove.


I hadnt stitched the binding down.

Keep dreaming...Colleen

Pillow made for mom's birthday with red and white scraps from this quilt.  The pattern is a 12" Swoon by Camille Roskelly.