Starting My Crayon Quilt

A local quilt shop is having a bale challenge (a bale is a role of fabric, usually fat quarters).  The rules are pretty liberal: basically you buy a bale from them, make a quilted wall hanging, and turn in your entry no later than this Saturday.  There are minimum and maximum dimensions, but you don't have to use the entire bale and you get to add up to three yards of additional fabric.

My bale consists of the brights on the perimeter of this photograph.  My additional fabrics are the black crosshairs (center top), a mixed print (center), and a nice nubby cream-colored muslin.

All these bright colors reminded me of a box of crayons, so that's going to be the focal point of my quilt. 

The design is my own, but I'm going to use these two books for some help.  I'll be using Quilt Talk for paper pieced letters.

I'll use Quilt As-You-Go Made Modern to guide me on my initial effort at the quilt-as-you-go method of quilting.  Since I don't have much time, I thought the quilting might go faster if I quilted it in small pieces.   I have a friend who uses this technique all the time, and she gave a really good and detailed presentation on it during one of our quilt guild schoolhouse sessions.  But that was a few years ago and I lost her directions.  I've always been scared to try it, but I think this might be the right time.

It took me ALL day yesterday to reconfigure my sewing room.  Therefore I didn't start on this quilt yesterday, like I hoped.  But the room is super cool and inspirational, so I'm looking forward to some marathon sewing days coming up.

Off I go...