Today’s Shades of Grey Scrap Challenge contribution comes to us from another talented Canadian, Michelle Southern (@KineticQuilts).  Michelle is the owner and “head quiltress” (love that title!) of Kinetic Quilts, a unique business in the quilting industry.  A self-professed “galpreneur”, Michelle launched Kinetic Quilts in 2010 with the idea of making unique, handmade quilts with a twist: an innovative online quilt label system that she developed herself from scratch. Every one of Michelle’s quilts (including the project she made for this challenge!) is tagged with a claim code that the quilt owner can enter into the Kinetic Quilts website, and receive information about fabrics, batting content, and photos of the quilt being made.

Proving yet again that Fat Quarterly readers are the most creative bunch around, Michelle brought us yet another completely original idea for a scrap project.  Let’s learn more about Michelle and take a look at her fab table runner.

–

This really was a project where I was completely working outside of my comfort zone – and I totally loved it!

Quilt Block

When I saw the Shades of Grey fabric for the first time, I knew I wanted a quilt block that showcased the large-scale, bold patterns in as big a way as possible. Although I looked online and through every book available I couldn’t find what I wanted. I ended up drafting the pattern myself for a 9″ paper-pieced block. You should know that I do not particularly enjoy paper piecing. The fact that I deliberately chose paper piecing AND also drafted my own pattern for the block should make it pretty obvious how badly I wanted to use this block for my project.

Colour

I have never worked with a grayscale colour scheme before, and finding a background fabric that worked for me was baffling. I had to audition every fabric in my stash (along with every colour, print, and solid in my local fabric store – I was there for hours) before I found that this green batik was the only one that I truly loved. I’d read that some quilters consider a solid black in quilts “bad luck” and so I usually tried to avoid it simply to avoid offending anyone. Using this solid “true” black was another first for me.

Fabric Design

The Shades of Grey line has wonderful, big and bold patterns that I love but made me realize I would typically choose smaller patterns or batiks for my quilts. So I got a crash course in working with blocks, settings, and layouts with large-scale patterns. The fabrics were also much thicker and had more stretch than I was used to so I had to make allowances for this. And stripes – oh my goodness, there were striped fabrics in my scrap package! I cut the stripes into a thin outer border and conquered my fear.

Pieced Backing

To keep with the “scrap” theme of the project I pieced the backing using every last available piece of the Shades of Grey fabric – even for such a small project it was a challenge for me to take the scraps and make them into a single useable section that I could use for the backing.

Quilting

Lastly, when I quilt I tend to use cotton or mono-filament thread. But again, I went flying into the arms of danger and chose a shiny, wrapped rayon thread to quilt the table runner with because it gave just the tiniest bit of sparkle peeking out from its place in the ditch.

Outside of all this fun fabric adventure, the scrap package was sent late, and my sewing machine seized during the project (along with two others I managed to find but could not get working). I also ended up at my doctor’s office on a heart monitor the day I had wanted to send in my completed project. I can’t believe I got it done but I am in love with the results. Every time I look at this table runner I am reminded of what we can do with our creative ideas when we have the chance to challenge ourselves. Although some people said they saw shamrocks within the blocks and fabrics, I definitely see Lily Pads – launching points for our froggy selves to jump from whenever inspiration strikes.

Thank you to Fat Quarterly and Daisy Janie for the opportunity to be a part of this Designer’s Challenge! All in all it was a fun project to be involved in, and I hope that in reading this you will make your next piece one in which you go outside of your OWN comfort zone! For more information on the products used with this table runner, enter the code 30gL6Nde at my Online Quilt Label System on my Kinetic Quilts website (http://kineticquilts.com).

~ Michelle Southern
Kinetic Quilts