The Nickle Challenge (did I mention that I liked to quilt?)

The Nickel Challenge Quilt

These are some of the prints I chose as my part of the challenge.

OK, not like I have enough to do, but I thought I'd like to take part in the Assiniboine Quilters Guild, nickel challenge quilt, you know the kind where you end up with 144 pieces of 5" squares and are to come up with a nice quilt.  The top has to be completed June and completely quilted in Dec (lots of time).  The members who jumped on it right away brought in their beautiful quilts amazingly soon after we started.  Well, there were mostly quilts done with triangles, of course I wanted something different!

Here is a pic of some of the squares we collected together.  I thought about it for some time, thinking that maybe a Amish type of quilt, simple with a black background to pop out the colours.  One thing led to another and before I knew it, I had a plan.  I went through my stash and added the number of squares that I thought would give me the required size for the challenge.  I cut all of the squares in half, then I decided that I wanted to have some play with the fabric, something to give it life.  So I ironed each piece in half and sewed a 1/4inch pleat down the centre, I did this which was fun, I had materials hanging in the bathroom, on hangers

Then I started laying everything out on the floor, (duplicates together).

I started putting out the squares in a graduated color scheme, something I didn't want to play with because I know nothing about it, however I just went with what was pleasing to my eye.  Because I have duplicate squares, my plan was to reflect them in the other half of the quilt.  Above is half of the quilt.

This is how it looks layed out.  I think it has a nice flow, I just reversed the rows placing the first column upside down on the far side and continued to the middle.  I wasn't sure how it was going to look because the middle rows would be so close, but I like it!!

Now getting back to the fabric manipulation, I thought I would run a multicoloured metallic  thread up and down each row to create a wave effect.  So I started doing that.

It's hard to see but each row has a wave to it!

I am now in the process of joining each row together, starting with the two middle rows as the wave peaks there into a larger wave.  I expect I will just border with a nice black.

I will post a pic of the completed top soon (at least of the wave action part) as I want to get this completed to I can get back to the other projects I haven't completed.