Red and White Quilt Challenge

Earlier this year I decided to commit myself to the SewCalGal 'A Year of Red and White Quilt Challenges'. The year started with an EQ (Electric Quilt) Bloghop which I took part in. After having no idea where to start with that post, I had a lot of fun with the Serendipity function and the coolest discovery was transforming this Bear's Paw block —

to this — (Serendipity>Kaleidoscope) —

Then in March there was the Design it! Challenge. I decided to play with EQ7 again and came up with several ideas I thought would look great as a quilt. This was my favourite —

At our annual retreat in May I started sewing up this quilt, and made another major EQ7 learning....look at the block below, the way I put the chains together while designing meant that the centre of this block was rather stupid.... 4 small squares joined together to make one big one - duh! I've always known that you cant just design off EQ7, you also need a working and practical knowledge of quilting and how blocks go together. Back to the drawing board and replacing that tedious centre of the block with one simple square!

 Fast forward a few months and all of a sudden the deadline for entering the SewCalGal Make It challenge was rapidly approaching..time to get busy and concentrate on a little red and white sewing!
First this emerged —

Then this —

 This area is foundation paper pieced. Rather daunting at first but broken down into all its parts it wasn't so bad! (Hehe, when I opened up this block to play with it, EQ7 took great delight in telling me something like Serendipity blocks are not really designed to be sewn and played with. I ignored the warning, so pleased I did!)

Put them together and below we have the result - Choice!! I must admit I raced home from work this afternoon to do the last few seams.... and it still needs a jolly good press, some de-threading, some papers removed and the odd seam resewn (whew) but yaay, I'm pleased to have got to this stage.

And I'm in time to link up with the SewCalGal Make It! Challenge... with an hour or so to spare! Go *here* if you want to see what others have made. It didn't have to be our own design and thank goodness unquilted tops are permitted!

EDIT - I'm also linking up with SewCalGal's Show It! Made It! Designed It! Challenge. To see more original designs go *here* and scroll down a little.
Thanks for reading along and letting me share my quilt (top). It feels great to be able to do that!
Happy creating,