de Jong Dream House: cricut

Sunday, October 15, 2017

Cricut Mini Quilt

2017 has been the year of social quilting. I'm feeling more confident in my art so I have expanded a bit out of my comfort zone this year and joined an online bee, am participating in a couple of swaps, am sewing up a storm with my various quilt alongs, and now, I am crossing something new off my bucket list: I'm submitting my first piece in a contest.

Every time I go to a quilt show, like I did this weekend, I see displays for contests and I think, "How do people hear about these things? I want to play!" I haven't completely answered that question, but by chance, I did hear about the Cricut Mini Quilt contest and had enough time to enter a submission.

Cricut is a cutting matching similar to the Silhouette Cameo I use. I have the original Cameo, bought in 2013. At the time, I went with Cameo because it was the only option for creating your own designs. I've started thinking about upgrading to the Silhouette Cameo 3, but now since learning about this contest, I'm impressed with the Cricut Maker, which looks pretty great, too. Cricuts have come a long way in the last few years! Three lucky winners of the mini-quilt contest will win one of these beasts.

There was a very short window for making the mini-quilt. The quilt can be any design, as long as it uses any combination of green, gray/silver, and white fabric and measures 12" x 12."

I decided to paper piece a block using a smaller version of the pattern I created for my Fireworks for Ingrid quilt.

I took extra care to make sure my points matched up. When I had all four sections done, I played around with the layout. I chose the middle one because I thought it had the best "wow factor" to stick out from the other submissions--fingers crossed!

I am pretty pleased with my points. The middle got pretty thick with two points intersecting, but I was able to push down the seams quite a bit so the block lays flat.

I had so many kind compliments on the spiral quilting on Ingrid's quilt, I decided to do the same thing with my mini. I used silver metallic thread. I've been scared to use it in the past, but I loved the way it looked with the prints I chose.

I don't have a stitch regulator on my Pfaff Quilt Expression 4.2--my only complaint!--so I quilted slowly to keep my stitches even. The hardest part is the beginning when the spiral is so tight and the initial semi-circle unfurls.

I have been quilting for 4.5 years and am working on my 90th quilt. Every single time I've bought a quilt, I did it all by machine. I know that hand quilted binding is preferred at shows, but it's always been too overwhelming for me to try.

After attaching the binding--by machine--I sat and stared at it awhile. On one hand, the mini size makes it a good option to try something new. On the other hand, since this is for a contest, I want to submit my very best work.

I decided to do the binding by hand. I watched a couple of video tutorials and got started. It took awhile to get into a rhythm, but I can see why some people find it relaxing. Realistically though, I think I will stick to machine binding because by the time I get to the binding, I'm itching to start my next quilt!

Not too bad for my first time.

Tomorrow my mini will go in the mail and I will cross my fingers. The top 32 minis will be displayed at the Houston Quilt Festival in a few weeks, and the top 3 will win a Cricut makers. I figure I'm a winner for trying new, scary things and entering my first contest!

UPDATED:

Well...shoot. I didn't win. But the winners are well deserved. It was a fun first experience and I will look forward to my next contest.