No not a very flattering name for this rather sweet mini quilt! But it is a hybrid  in the sense that its design is a blend of all sorts of aspects of other quilts out there put into one 12″ square. I wish I were an original thinker but I’m not. What I am good at is finding beautiful quilts and clever ideas and mashing them together hopefully to produce something equally beautiful. Thanks to the power and accessibility of the internet, not to mention the generosity of this community, finding wonderfully creative quilts, which I guess have been influenced by other quilts, makes that part easy. My habit is to save the picture on my pictures folder on my ipad and then every so often flick through them when I need an idea. And an idea was needed for this quilt as it’s a challenge quilt for the Modern Section of the Quilters Guild.

The modern quilt movemement has its heart in the US where quilting is big, the size of the population alone helps. The definitions of modern quilting are many and numerous but for me they are fresher, often brighter and more graphic than their traditional quilts. The UK Quilters Guild took a little while to warm up to the rapid growth of modern quilting but owing to the work of Helen Howes and Heather Hasthorpe, both very accomplished quilters in a whole range of quilting techniques, a Modern Section has been set up and has grown very fast.  Every year the Modern Section put out a challenge to its 200 or so members and a small mini can be entered which is then shown round various quilt shows across the U.K.

The first year the theme was equilateral triangles. What I love about theses challenges  is that aside from the quilt following the theme and a set size, you are completely free to do your own take. Here is one of my two entries for that challenge it’s from the beautiful Painted Leaf design by  Sarah Elizabeth of Not Hats in the House. And it is square – it’s just a rubbish picture!!

This will coming home to me soon after a year away (and I can try and take a better photo for a start) and these two are this year’s challenge quilts with the theme Black and White and One Other (colour) and are off on their travels.

 

This year’s theme is a bit different  only 12″ square but it must incorporate the challenge fabrics which are these….

 

An interesting choice really as the two batiks are fabrics typically found in traditional quilts. But I guess that’s the challenge …..  any way what to do. Having done a mustard and black themed quilt already I wanted to do something different and had been itching to play with some fabrics from Maureen Cracknell’s range Fleet and Flourish I’d bought earlier this year. I thought they went rather well with these fabrics. And yes they do rather hide them…but as the challenge is to use the supplied fabrics not necessarily feature them I guessed that was OK. And every bit did get used….

Then to the design. Being so small I thought it would be fun to work on a small scale. I’d admired this beautiful quilt from the recent Bloggers Festival by Pasqualina of Pasqualina This and That.  It should have won but didn’t. My favourites never do! And then  from the blog hop of this fabric range this stunning quilt here where the lovely log cabin cheater fabric was used for the centre of squares by Amy Friend of During Quiet Time who is always very inspirational and very original…sigh  There have been other log cabin quilts I’ve seen that take this very old design to new places. Anyway I set to and drafted a log cabin design for some paper piecing. Because I wanted it set on point I needed 12 blocks. Time consuming but very satisfying.

And those challenge fabrics? They got this treatment but I agree in the finished quilt it is a question of spot the fabric.

Disaster struck when I started to take the papers off….. lesson learnt don’t use a seam ripper… But as it was first test block I made and not particularly accurately maybe it was good to remake and improve on the accuracy.

 

Anyway all done and with some simple straight line quilting – there are over 250 seams in this small mini quilt, it has texture enough believe me!!!  I tried a matched colour binding for the first time so it wasn’t too framed. I’m pleased with the effect of that. And the deadline for this challenge quilt? Oh next August/September. Are there more pressing quilts to do? Yes of course but I like to do what takes my fancy.  It’s about the only area of my life where I can do that and get away with it!

 

Another look at this quilt. Still not sure which way up is right!!

This is another quilt off my Q4 FAL list and my original post about that is here.

Linking up with Kelly at My Quilt Infatuation for Needlework and Thread Thursday and Amanda Jean at Crazy Mom Quilts