Although I won’t be there, a quilt of mine will be and that in itself is exciting!  Also there is a moral to this story, so be sure to read to the end.

I decided to enter a quilt into the Michael Miller Glitz Fabric Challenge for this year’s QuiltCon in Pasadena.   I was a lucky recipient of a pack of 8 fat-eighths of Michael Miller Glitz in black/silver and white/silver.  I have not used metallics in a quilt before, so that in itself was challenging.

The fabrics above should be the focal point of the point, but other Michael Miller solids were permitted.  Michael Miller prints could be used on the back and/or binding.

After some soul searching I decided to order Mist & Honey as solids for the front.  I love how the warm honey and the cool mist play off each other and has become one of my new favorite color combinations.

And I found a coordinating Michael Miller print for the back that also used the same colors.  Maybe I’m on the only one loving that combination.  I couldn’t tell by the picture that the print I picked for the back had metallic gold accents until it was here.  It was metallic gold, and I had metallic silver for the front.  Hmmm…  Oh, well.  It is what it is.  I decided to roll with it.  The charcoal solid was for the binding.  

You may recall the block I designed earlier in the year for the Cirrus Solids Block Challenge.  This block was very easy to piece  since it is made up of 1″ blocks (finished) and then longer 1″ strips or rectangles to fill in the remainder of the negative space.

I decided to rework this block to use just two colors (black and white) and to piece the block so that the colors looked they there were woven together.  The center white squares really gave me a headache.  In order to piece complete squares or rectangles to create the block, the center white strip needed to be 3 pieces.  But the ‘woven’ look I was trying to achieve didn’t work with 3 separate pieces there.   It needed to be one piece.  Well, that ended up creating more issues when piecing the rest of the block.  Long story short… it was easier for me to piece the entire block with three 1″ white squares there in the middle, and then when the block was finished, pick out those three 1″ white squares and replace them with a 1″ x 3″ rectangle.  That really surprised me!  Surprised that it was easier to do it that way and pick and resew than it was to sew the block with the correct piece to start with.  But it really was.  And if you don’t understand all that…. let me know and I’ll make another block with pictures and explain it better.

I made 4 blocks – two with honey and two with mist and then placed them opposite of each other.  I decided not to use the charcoal solid for the binding.  It just didn’t look right.  Instead, I decided to finish the quilt by ‘facing’ the edges.  I LOVE how it looks!  It gave the edges a clean crisp finish.  I will definitely be using this method again!  In fact, I already have with the buck I appliqued here, and I’m getting ready to finish a 3rd wall hanging using this same method.  In fact, I may never traditionally bind another wall hanging.

I quilted it with a spiral (lines are 3/8″ apart) with my walking foot, except in the very middle.  A spiral is next to impossible to quilt (neatly) in the very center.  So instead I started the spiral a little wider and filled in the center with some parallel lines.

Last but not least, every quilt entered into the competition needed a story.  Yikes!!  Ummm… a story.  I guess ‘because I liked the way it looked’ wasn’t good enough.  So, I put on my thinking cap…

This is my story (with limited number of characters)…

Intertwined Lives: I reworked a block I designed earlier this year for the Cirrus Solids BOM challenge. The woven glitz fabrics show how we, individual people, are different colors and have different features, and how our lives intertwine with others over our lifetimes. The lives of the people that we have these relationships with, also intertwine with people we will never meet and never directly have any impact on because we lead parallel lives. However, the circular stitching exposes the bits and pieces of ourselves that get carried from our direct relationships to these parallel relationships. Without our knowledge, bits and pieces of ourselves are deposited into others lives and we never know if these pieces will have a small or a significant impact. Moral of the story: Your life affects more than just the people you know first-hand, so make sure your life is worth sharing.

Quilt measures approx 24″ x 24″.

Oh, and if you happen to be at QuiltCon and see my quilt, please let me know.

Linking up with Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation, Finish it Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts, and  Can I Get a Whoop Whoop at Confessions of a Fabric Addict.