Jay McCarroll Habitat Challenge

A few months ago the Portland Modern Quilt Guild challenged each of the guild members to create a 12" finished block using fabrics from the Jay McCarroll Habitat collection. We were given fat eights of six different fabrics and we had a month to create our blocks. The president of our chapter then put out a second call: would anyone be interested in putting these quilts together. My hand went up immediately: I was excited to work on sampler compositions and really challenge myself to come up with something that reflected the vibe of our guild: modern, fun and fresh.

I lived with the blocks for a while before I came up with the sampler designs. They fell into two distinct camps: the first I decided was the 'motif' camp, blocks that used solids with the prints to create a dynamic design. The second camp were blocks that used the prints together and didn't use solids (or didn't use high contrast solids.) I decided to approach the 'motif' blocks using more of a traditional sashing/frame idea, and the print blocks I went for a more risky composition that I called the 'scrappy film strip.' Luckily Linda Nussbalm, a fellow guild member and blogger stepped in and offered to help. We both sewed our hearts out at the PMQG sew-day at Fabric depot and I finished the last parts of the project todayI am sending them off to Rachel, of Second Ave Studio (and also a guild member) to quilt.