Project Quilting Challenge 10.1

Will Wonders Never Cease?? I completed the first challenge in Season 10 of Project Quilting!  A FIRST in a lot of ways!  I've been following Project Quilting and voting for a couple of years now, but I've never taken the plunge and entered!  The concept of completing a project in a week's time has always been daunting to me, even though the entries for Project Quilting can be any size.  When I saw the first theme for this season, however, a project idea came immediately to mind.  So, without giving it too much thought (another first...I usually hem and haw and generally overthink), I pulled out some fabric and gave it a go. 

The first theme this year is Hope Springs Eternal.  I have many hopes and many wishes, but for the last 13 years, one HOPE has been on the forefront of my mind - a cure for cystic fibrosis.  My daughter, Emily, lives with the disease, and she is doing quite well - no hospital stays for almost 2 years!! - but every few month a new "hallmark" symptom of the disease seems to appear.  She is an amazing kid who rarely complains and does a great job managing her own care.  And, it's a lot of work!  She's up before 5:15 each day to do a round of meds and treatments before school, she has known the name, function and dosage of all her medications since she was 7, and she just generally does what she needs to do.  I have high hopes that she will continue to be active and mostly healthy for a LONG time.  In the last few years, several new medications have come on the market that basically correct the genetic defect in CF.  Researchers are attacking this disease mutation by mutation, and the results are nothing short of amazing.  But, so far, no miracle drug has been developed that works on Emily's specific combination of genes.  Early testing on the newest combination of drugs, however, indicates that this *MIGHT* be our year.  I am very HOPEful that Emily could go from taking more that 30 pills and spending 2 hours doing percussive therapy each day to taking one pill each day before the end of 2019.  What a gift that would be. 

So.  When I read "Hope Springs Eternal," an image of a purple awareness ribbon popped into my head.  Then, I remembered a ziploc bag of purple fabric squares that I won a while ago through an Instagram give away.  If memory serves correctly, they came from Laura at Slice of Pi quilts.  When I won them, I thought I'd someday turn them into a CF themed quilt, since purple is the official "awareness color" for the disease. That never happened.  But, I quickly found the bag, and realized that they would make the perfect background for a mini quilt featuring a purple ribbon!

I need to dive into this bag again in the near future.  So many pretty shades of purple!

Before work on Wednesday I picked out 16 squares, and quickly arranged them.  No second guessing, no re-arranging.  That night, after dinner, I sewed them together and gave it a quick press.  Thursday. I printed out the first awareness ribbon template I found on a Google search, cut it out of a large purple scrap, and raw edge appliqued it to the background.  Again, no debating, or thinking.  So not like me!  I still had the extra batting from basting my Happy Thoughts quilt in a bag under the sewing table, so I grabbed that and cut a square the right size.  My daughter happened to be in the sewing room working on her "lettering" skills.  So, I asked her to write "hope" on the ribbon.  I LOVE that it's in her writing.  And I quickly hand stitched over it without once going back and un stitching to make it more even and smooth.  On Friday after work, while my daughters made a meatloaf for dinner, I went to the sewing room.  On the way up, I grabbed the open toe free motion quilting foot that had been a Christmas gift and was still under the tree.  I had no intention of using it on this project.  I was just putting it away in anticipation of taking down the tree in the morning.  But, when I got upstairs, I thought, "Well, why not?  I have to try it sometime!"

So, I put the new foot on the machine and dropped the feed dogs!   Now, I am NOT a free motion quilter. I've only dabbled a few times, never on a real project and never on this machine!  But, after a quick practice piece to check tension and figure out what I was doing, I did it!  I free motion quilted this little purple piece!  Its terrible quilting!  Just swirls and loop-de-loops and lots of stitching in the same areas while there's none other parts.  But, in about 5 minutes, my 8 inch square was done!  I FMQ'd!  With no overthinking and no procrastinating out of fear that it wouldn't be "good."  Wow!  Who am I??  When I finished the quilting, I realized that I had enough backing around the edge to do a quick self binding.  So, before the meatloaf was out of the oven, my Project Quilting entry was done!

I really love seeing "HOPE" in Emily's handwriting.  So special to me.

Is it my best work? Oh no.  Do I expect to win anything in the challenge?  Nope.  Was it fun and freeing and did I learn a few things?  You bet!  I learned that the foot goes on my machine really easily and it's easy to adjust the tension to get a good stitch on the front and the back!  No need to procrastinate because I'm not sure how to put it on or what settings to use!  I learned that perfection is not as fun as spontaneity!  I learned that it feels really good to just jump in and try!  And I learned that my daughters make really, really good meatloaf!

My mini quilt is 8 inches square and might be destined to be a mug rug.  OR, it just might hang on the wall in the sewing room as a reminder to be spontaneous, to try new things and to never give up hope! 
 
See all of this week's entries at Persimon Dreams.  And don't forget to vote for your favorite starting Sunday at noon!