I submitted my entry to this year’s Cherrywood Challenge over the weekend and am excited to share a little more about it today! This is a yearly challenge put on by Cherrywood Fabrics and features their hand dyed fabric. I’ve enjoyed seeing the quilts from previous years every November at Quilt Festival and finally decided to join the fun.
This year’s theme was Bob Ross. (Previous years have been Prince, Van Gogh, The Lion King, and Wicked.) The fabric bundle featured 8 different solids in colors that Bob Ross frequently used in his paintings, and these were the ONLY fabrics that could be used.
There are so many great Bob Ross quotes that I immediately started thinking about doing something text-based. I had several different ideas, but when I saw the names of the paint colors written out on the challenge instruction form, I realized they would make a great quilt on their own!
The letters finish at 2″ tall and each one is paper pieced. Y’all that is a LOT of tiny pieces. It took a long time — hooray for the letter I but curses on the letter S — and made me question my sanity more than once. But I think you’ll agree that the result it worth it!
There are several challenge quilts popping up on Instagram this week now that the deadline is past, and they are all so cool and unique. I knew in advance that this challenge draws a lot of art quilts, and mine is definitely NOT that style. But there’s nothing in the rules that says it HAS to be an art quilt, and I hope that my modern, text-based design will help it stand out!
The stats:
- Quilt measures 20″ square.
- Original design by me.
- For the letters, I used the Alphabet Quilt Pattern by Diane Bohn, and resized the letters to finish at 2″ tall.
- Fabrics are all Cherrywood Hand Dyed Fabrics.
- Quilted with Aurifil clear monofilament thread on top and Gutermann cotton thread in the bobbin.
I’ll find out in a couple weeks whether my quilt is a finalist. Fingers crossed!
