Life of Riley crayon box challenge...

Rachel from The Life of Riley had a fun crayon challenge with her quilt guild. I think she picked out a really pretty color!  Her blog has tons of tutorials from jewelry making to stuffed animals. And tons of recipes too! I like the idea of a quilt challenge, making you think outside of the crayon box (get it! man, I am a funny one today!)

My 'Crayon Challenge Quilt' is finished.  About 6 months ago 46 members of our Quilt Guild chose a random crayon out of a bag and had to complete a 12" x 12" or 8" x 10" quilt with at least 50% of the fabric being the color of the crayon. The quilts will be silent auctioned for a fund raiser for one of the local hospitals. My crayon was 'jungle green'.  Interestingly it is not a yellow-green color, but has much more blue in it than I was expecting.  I went in search of a matching fabric in the stash and found some that was quite close to perfect.  Then I pulled out the lighter color for the contrast. I started by cutting out blocks and laying them out in various patterns.  I originally was going to do the quilt blocks on point, but I didn't have enough.  Once I decided on the simple one patch grid and cut some other shapes and played around with those.  This is what I ended up with.

 I used some decorative stitches to secure the appliques and emphasize the blocks.  I did the binding in the lighter color because I didn't have nearly enough of the dark (which I would have preferred), but it rather looked like it was 'floating'.  So I decided to add the beads on the edge.  Then to tie it all together I added some to the rectangles. 

Overall I am pretty happy with the little quilt.  If I could go back, I probably would have put less beads on the edge - it is pretty heavy for a small quilt.