Letting the Cat out of the Bag

(Sorry the photo is a little blurry)

Well, Caity, my friend, here it is especially for you (and anyone else who is remotely interested). The challenge quilt! The challenge was "Dancing Beijing". You were limited to no more than eight fabrics and the size of the quilt had to be between 6 and 8 foot in perimeter.

I have called mine "Dancing with the Stars into the Forbidden City". The longest title I have ever thunk up. Anyway, the red background and yellow stars represent the Chinese flag. The yellow stars are doing a ribbon dance into the Forbidden City which is located in the heart of Beijing.

Lessons I have learnt doing my first ever challenge quilt:

a) Read the instructions carefully especially the bit about the size of the quilt. (Fortunately I had allowed extra "topping" to be trimmed off later - it was not trimmed off - every little bit was used). Result - A quilt measuring 72.5 inches Phew! that was close!

b) Never, ever, ever, put a hot iron onto polyester wadding. Admittedly it was an accident, but the iron now has a very sticky, unmoveable patch on it. It is teflon coated, so don't know what to use to remove it. Have tried eucalyptus oil, orange sticky remover stuff. Any ideas? Anyone??

c) Practice new techniques somewhere else first instead of going in gungho into the challenge piece.

Other than those minor irritations, it all went very well considering I had no drawn design and just went by the seat of my pants.

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