Project Quilting 14.6--Conquer a Fear

This is the last week for the 2023 Project Quilting Challenge hosted by Kim Lapacek of Persimon Dreams and assisted by Trish Frankland of Quilt Chicken.  I'm happy to have completed every challenge this year, and I've enjoyed coming up with a new idea for each one.

Our theme for this final challenge of the year was "Conquer a Fear." The idea for this challenge is that facing fear is the way to grow and move forward. Staying in your comfort zone leaves you safe but stagnant. There are many ways the challenge could be interpreted, whether it involves a personal fear like spiders, or something related to quilting like avoiding a specific type of design because it is too difficult.

I considered several possible directions, and settled on "random." I've never been comfortable with totally random piecing. I love making scrappy quilts, but am much happier with the controlled scrappy look. For this challenge, I decided to go totally random with my scrappiness.

I pulled stacks of 2.5" squares in a variety of colors and tossed them all together in a shoe box. I shook them up well, then started pulling them out in pairs and stitching them together. It was very hard for me, but I really fought the urge to switch colors if I didn't like what came out together. I kept adding more squares until I had 8 columns of 6 squares each, which were then joined together into this placemat.

That turned out okay, so I made another one.

Here are both of them together. They might have turned out a little differently if they had been more "planned," but I like the bright mix of all the colors in the random layouts, and I enjoyed the freedom of not worrying about where the colors landed.

Both placemats are quilted with continuous curves in turquoise thread (because that's what was already on the machine.) They each finished at 12.5" x 16.5". The backing fabric, shown in the photo below, was folded to the front to finish off the edges.

These placemats will join the others I've been making since the beginning of the year to be donated to Meals on Wheels through our quilt guild.

Linking up with:

Project Quilting 14.6 at Persimon Dreams

Oh Scrap! at Quilting is more fun than Housework

Happy quilting everyone!

Julie in GA