H.O.P.E. Challenge

It's actually called the Hope Springs Eternal-Challenge 1 of Project Quilting Season 10.

This is my first season. This is my first entry. This was so much fun to do.

While I have plenty of other goodies in my bag to create and do, it was fun to just park those off to the side for a day and have fun with scraps, letters, appliqué, quilting, and then finding a way to present the finished project.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's start from the beginning. First a decision needed to be made (because plenty of ideas were rattling around in my head), WHAT exactly should be created. Since the ideas rattled around probably a day (or two) longer than should have, a clean and concise project was decided upon.

Starting out:

From the "White" bucket

All my little scraps are kept in buckets on a rotating stand. With the previous project, I was able to reduce all but the whites/off whites (and the browns) down to less-than-overflowing amount. I decided to make fabric out of some of the whites/off whites for the base of my message to reduce them somewhat as well.

Next:

Two blocks down. Two to go.

Making four fabric background blocks to put the letters on.

Oops!

Enough?

I needed to fuse the letters to the background blocks and this is all the fusible that was left in my supply. There are no resources nearby to acquire anymore because we live pretty remotely. Part of creation sometimes is making due.

After working through the fusible shortage:

Making the letters freehand and sizing them correctly

Each letter is individually appliquéd down with a different stitch.

A star stitch for the "O"

After trimming off threads, the blocks needed to be quilted. They could have been done on my home sewing machine, or put onto the long arm. Long arming gets me off my behind, so decided to go that route.

Echo quilting around each letter

After trimming and deciding on how to finish the blocks, a hanger was applied for display. The blocks are left without a formal binding and a zig-zag stitch around each of them was applied instead. I didn't want to detract from the letters and couldn't decide on a binding color that wouldn't.

H.O.P.E.

This will be a gift for next Christmas. I have a son and daughter-in-law who had a child born with a digestive abnormality. She spent her first month of life in the NICU and they never gave up hope on Hannah. She is now a thriving two-year old who loves to dote on her new baby brother.

It was great to use some of the left over scraps hanging around in the studio. It was fun to quickly come up with something and then use many of the resources available to textile artists today. It was not fun losing sleep over trying to decide which of the many ideas bouncing around in my head would be created in a short amount of time, and still be something proud to make, give away, and display. But I think the kids will enjoy having this hanging in their home.