a challenge win

The larger guild that I belong to has a challenge every year.  This year the challenge was "what can you do with a panel?".  We get the challenge on the last Saturday of January and it's due the last Saturday of October.  I always go to a small quilt show and one stop shop hop with my friends every year in February and I found a Valentine panel.  I apparently have a weakness for Valentine fabric because I have a lot of it already.  So other than the panel the whole project came from my stash.

Each panel had two of the big heart squares with some really dark red polka dot fabric between them.  I bought two panels and used three of the heart squares in the bed runner and then cut the smaller hearts out of the fourth heart square and appliqued them to a background and made the throw pillow.

I totally love the way this looks on the guest bed.

What can you do with a panel?

That is the challenge.  Pick a panel you like and do something with it.  The challenge was issued at the January guild meeting with your entry due at the October meeting.

So in February I go to a combined quilt show/shop hop and one of the vendors has a Valentine panel.  I know I already have a plenty of heart/Valentine fabric to go with it so I got two panels.  I got two because each panel has two different heart squares on it and I'm glad I did since I ended up using three of the squares from the panels.

I knew I didn't want to make a large quilt and I didn't want to do a wall hanging either.  I've seen lots of patterns and ideas for bed runners lately so I decided that's what I'd do.  I'll also make a pillow shams and a throw pillow to go with it later on.

The first pic is the bed runner after its been quilted but before the binding has been put on.  The second pic is one of the paper pieced hearts.  They were such a pain to do but oh so cool when they were done and they really make the quilt.  The last pic is a close up of some of the quilting.  I had it long arm quilted and told her to "fancy it up."