Posted in quilting, recycling

SAHRR 2024 Finish: Migration World

Posted on by Laura Kate

This is the week that Quilting Gail has designated for challenge participants to post pictures of their finished quilts. The Stay At Home Round Robin challenge is in its fourth year. It’s been a fun ride for me, and pure pleasure to see the work of other quilters as they add a border week by week.

It started for me when I chose a center block from a group of experiments that I did almost five years ago. Back then I was teaching fiber arts to a group of home-schooled children. One week I had the students experiment with fabric paint on pieces of a cut-up sheet. The panel I used in my SAHRR came from the example I made, to show the students some of the possibilities of fabric paint.

Four colors of paint were applied in bands horizontally across the fabric and allowed to bleed together. When the panel dried, it looked like a mountain scene to me. I enhanced the image with opaque white paint, paint pens and stencils of pine trees.

The painted panel set the color palette for my SAHRR.

That choice led me on a path which resulted in a quilt about migration. For some time, I had been toying with designing and sewing paper pieced butterfly blocks. Could I make a quilt about the monarch annual migration to Mexico? The time I spent researching this migration led me to think about the wider issues of habitat loss and climate change. Now I had a broader story to tell with my quilt.

The weekly challenges offered by SAHRR quilters helped me to build some structure around my ideas. For that I am grateful.

Here are some close-ups of a few details I added with applique and micron pens.

And here is my finished quilt:

Just a word about the materials used: I was determined to buy nothing for this project, making it entirely with stuff that I already owned. I mentioned the cut-up sheet. In addition, I recycled pieces of clothing such as dresses and men’s shirts. The main fabric, which was used as sashing, was also divided up and painted various colors to carry it into most of the borders. Ultimately, I did have to buy a few quarter yards of black patterned fabric and the quilt’s batting.

Thank you to organizer Quilting Gail and her fellow designers who put together this year’s SAHRR challenge. You can find their work here:

And to see the finished quilts, follow this link.

https://fresh.inlinkz.com/party/7eab5849658e4307bf5cfcff8e69c998

Author:

One of six children, I was raised by a busy mom, who instilled in me a love of fabric. Though I learned to sew and knit at a young age, it was the arrival of my first grandchild that pushed me into action. A long-time knitter, I am now ready to explore all things fiber.

34 thoughts on “SAHRR 2024 Finish: Migration World”

  1. It has really been fun to watch the progress of your quilt, and it finished up so nicely! Isn’t it fun to use up what you have? It can be a challenge, but it feels so good to put the fabric to use. I wish I’d thought of something like this back when I was homeschooling my kids!

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  3. Laura Kate!ā€‚You did an awesome job with your quilt! Such wonderful creativity!ā€‚And congratulations on finishing it!ā€‚I love how you used what you had (for the most part) …

    Thanks for participating in the 2024 SAHRR and for linking up!

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  8. Oh my! This is quite amazing! I have done a minute amount of quilting in the past – not a lot but enough to know what a masterpiece this is! I am in awe of your skills!

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  9. I am truly amazed at your artistic talent and ability to integrate your theme and process with the prompts for such a thought-provoking piece. I looked forward to your post each week and am so glad you participated in the SAHRR. I learned so much. I bet you were a wonderful teacher.

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  10. Iā€™ve really enjoyed following this quilt week by week. You have put everything together so cleverly it really is a captivating work of art with lots of detail to look at at lots to think about šŸ™‚

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