Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Tuesday Archives - The Almost Charm Pack Quilt

This week's Tuesday Archives was a hard one.  This week's themes over at Val's Quilting Studio are "charm pack" and "chicken quilts".  



Val's Quilting Studio


I've never made a chicken quilt.  Making one isn't even on my bucket list, though I've certainly seen some cute ones. So that leaves my history with charm packs as my topic for today's post.  The only problem is, there's really not much history.  I've never made a quilt using charm packs, though I fully intended to.  Like many of my quilting adventures it started off with something Drama Teen wanted.  Drama Teen's Girl Scout Troop made a very small quilt from charm packs when she was about 9.  The quilt was put up for silent auction to raise money for the DT's school.  We ended up with the winning bid much to DT's delight.


However, I got a phone call late that evening from one of the auction organizers.  The quilt was never intended to have been put up for auction, there had been a huge misunderstanding and the owner of the quilt wanted it back.  Drama Teen (who was just Kiddo then) was absolutely crushed.  It's hard to explain things like that to a 9 year old, the quilt really needed to go back.  I promised her we'd make a quilt and we'd use pictures of her friends along with the charm squares.  I was really quite proud of her, she handed the quilt back to the owner herself and told the owner that she understood how much the quilt meant. 

I got as far as mocking a photo-charm quilt up in EQ using some example pictures and EQ fabrics that were similar in color to the charm packs in the stash.  



DT OK'd the design and the charm packs, but before I could get started on it, she saw a mock up of another project I had been playing around with for a class I was taking.  She asked me to use those fabrics and a similar layout for her photo quilt. This is what we ended up with.  

Friends Squared
self designed
 So what started off as a charm pack project ended up using yardage instead.  I tried to use the charm design for the class auction project I blogged about last week (here).  But that photo quilt also took a turn somewhere along the way and ended up as a medallion quilt instead. 

That's it for me this week.  Check out more "historical" quilting efforts over at Val's Quilting Studio

6 comments:

Jo said...
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Jo said...
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Tina Craig said...

I'm glad you won the Girl Scout quilt and it came back home with you. No one would have appreciated it more! I did a lot of sewing with my Girl Scouts, too.

Paula said...

Oh I love the photo quilt? Did you just transfer the photos onto white fabric? Would love info on how you did that!

Val's Quilting Studio said...

Hey she may not be interested in learning to quilt...but she sure does know how to appreciate them!! YAH!!!

Shay said...

I cant get over how little DT looks in that photo compared to now!

How disappointing for you all that you couldn't keep the original quilt . But I think your replacement more than made up for it - it's lovely!