Reveal - Color Challenge

 It's time to reveal my 2021 Color Challenge project!

I enjoyed participating in the Color Challenge hosted by 

Jen - of Patterns by Jen. 

Not only did we get awesome quilt block patterns, there were quarterly door prizes provided by some wonderful sponsors, we learned a lot about a nice variety of fruits and vegetables, and we even shared some delicious recipes. 

All in all, it was a wonderful year! 

Be sure to read all the way to the end of this post to find links to some of the other bloggers who are sharing their finished projects today.

For the past three years I sewed two blocks each month and created two quilts from those blocks. In case you missed them here are the 2019 quilts and the 2020 quilts 

I went a little rogue with my project this year and am quite happy with my choice.

I still made two blocks each month, but this year I made one 12" block and one 6" block. The 2021 theme was fruits and vegetables.

All of my 12" blocks were made using one consistent fabric (bright green) and one fabric that had the featured fruit or vegetable in it. There were a couple of months that I couldn't decide which fabric to use, so I made two 12" blocks that month. That was fun!

My 6" blocks were made using Mosaic Masterpiece by Cheryl Lynch. 

I chose to use this fabric right after the 2021 challenge was announced because I knew it would be perfect. I met Cheryl at a workshop back in 2019, right before this fabric, her first collection, was introduced. I fell in love with the fabric and ordered some right away. She has since designed a second collection and has yet another one coming soon. If you read my post a couple of days about my Secret Sewing Reveal, you know that I used these fabrics in another quilt - a scrap quilt, and I love the results. 

So what does all this have to do with my finished 2021 quilt? Well...I decided that I didn't want to make two quilts, or even one for that matter. Since the theme was fruits and vegetables, I decided to make placemats and mug rugs instead. 

Using the 12" blocks each month I sewed 1" fabric strip to the right side of the block and then either a single 4" piece of the featured fabric or a 4" pieced section that included the featured fabric. (Actually, the January block was made with a 6" pieced section, but I decided that was too large, so I scaled it back to 4" for the rest of the year.)

All of the placemats that feature fruit were backed with this fabric. 

And all of the vegetable placemats are backed with this fabric.  

The binding was chosen based on the 1" fabric strip that was used. 

The mug rugs are all backed with the consistent green fabric used in the placemats so they work well with the placemats. Like the placemats, I made a couple of extra mug rugs and am that I did. As you can see, there are a few mug rugs that do not include the Mosaic fabric. When I started the project, I had a fat quarter bundle of the fabrics shown above. For some of the months I didn't have the right color, so I didn't use it. In those cases, I used the light mosaic fabric instead, and substituted a solid (or one that reads solid) fabric to correspond to that month's color. 

The mug rugs were not bound. Instead, I stitched a 1/4" all around them to give the appearance of a binding. 

All in all, I am very happy with these placemats and mug rugs. It makes setting the table fun for the grandkids, as they each choose which one they want to use; and there has been no arguing yet.  Yay!

It's fun to see this pile in the kitchen and even more fun to watch the kids go through it and decide which one they want to use. 

Thank you Jen for another wonderful and colorful year!

Check out the finished projects by these bloggers...

Patterns by Jen

Daybrook Designs

Frances Quilts

True Blue Quilts

Create with Claudia