oakshott ruby

I am so excited to be part of the Oakshott Ruby Mini Quilt Challenge hosted by Sew Mama Sew. I've been admiring oakshott fabrics for quite a while so I was thrilled to have this opportunity to actually see it in person, not to mention to use it in a project!

I received the ruby red fat 8th bundle which included 16 fabrics and I knew right away that I wanted to use every one of them in my quilt (though ultimately, I think I only used 15 of the 16.) The challenge was to make a mini quilt but I actually made, um, 3?!?!?  

Quilt 1:  For the first mini, I started by cutting a small amount off of each fabric (about 1" to 1 1/2" from the short side) and sewing them together in strips. I then sewed the strips together and framed it with a chambray fabric (at least I think it is chambray) which I heavily quilted with straight lines. As I had planned to leave the oakshott unquilted, I substituted flannel for the batting. And then I finished the mini into a pillow by adding a simple envelope backing.

Quilt 2: The pillow looked so lonely on my couch that I figured I should make it a friend! This time, I cut the oakshott into triangles and used a dark gray essex yarn-dyed fabric for the background. I then framed it with a border of linen that was similar in color to the chambray used in the first mini. I heavily quilted the linen border with straight lines (to complement the first mini) and for the gray background, I quilted a bunch of intersecting diagonal lines.

Quilt 3: After I finished the second mini, I added the large leftover pieces to my stash; however, I still had the small scraps from the first two projects - what to do, what to do. I mean, I could have just added them to my scrap drawer but instead I started sewing them together. And the next thing I knew, I had made another mini with the scraps. I sewed this one with absolutely no plan - and while I questioned my piecing choices often while making it, I decided to just keep going. 

To be honest, I'm not sure how I feel about this one and I wasn't even sure I wanted to share it on my blog, at the very least not in this post. I actually had this post finished well before I clicked the publish button because of this indecision but since quilt blogging is about sharing the successes and the failures, I decided to leave it in! I think I would have liked it better if I made each section an actual rectangle instead of sewing some of  the background fabrics to the oakshott on an angle. But oh, well.

I decided to really experiment with the quilting on this one and I am so glad I did. I quilted all sorts of different shapes, used a few different colors of thread, and I quilted some of it with heavy, matchstick quilting while other parts I quilted quite lightly. Again, there are some things I would change with the quilting (including quilting more of the ruby sections) but overall, I had a lot of fun doing it and it is something I am going to definitely try again.

Thanks so much to Sew Mama Sew and Oakshott Fabrics for giving me the chance to work with these great fabrics. I definitely hope to use oakshott fabrics again! 

And be sure to visit the other bloggers involved in this challenge:

Debbie of A Quilter's Table

Jen of bettycrockerass

Malka of A Stitch in Dye

Deborah of Whipstitch

Kristy of St. Louis Folk Victorian