54-40 or Fight Block Due February 4 at noon.

This is my Green Comet miniquilt. Once again, I am too close to the finish line! My goal for the next challenge is to finish sooner and use the web page link properly.

This week’s challenge was to use the 54 -40 or Fight block as the inspiration. I was aware of the slogan and it’s history, but I had never seen the block. At first I was very uninspired by the block itself- then I looked at some of the versions using the colors in imaginative ways to highlight different aspects of the star.

This image came from the challenge announcement.

I thought hard about fussy-cutting- something I love doing. I decided to highlight the little spikes as a star and used the astronomic phenomenon, the Green Comet of 2023 as my theme. The Green Comet was visible February 1-2. It was -18 degrees Farenheit here in Minnesota during the best viewing weather. I looked out the window but it wasn’t possible to see it. However, I had a very vivid dream that I had seen the coment.

This is an in-process shot of the quilt.

I had some lovely blue to yellow ombre fabric (1/2 yard) and I used the freezer paper method for cutting the ombre stars on the yellow/green border for an intense color. I used this grey DNA fabric that I love (retired molecular biologist) and fussy cut out the matching spikes of DNA. There are some (including Francis Crick) who think DNA could have traveled through space to our planet from distant galaxies.

I fussy cut some dinosaur fabric for the 4-patch block in the center to highlight comets/asteroids resulting in dinosaur extinction. I included the chemistry set because a lot of chemistry is used in figuring out the color of the comet being green (traces of copper). For fun I included an astronaut in a space suit, representing NASA and other scientists excited to study comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF).

The first 12 inches of the block are the 54-40 block and then there are an additional 9 4-patch blocks, some with half-square triangles representing the sparks flying off the comet hitting the atmosphere. My process is cut out a lot of blocks from a lot of fabrics and then assemble them on a design wall or table. I rummaged through the stash and found the fabrics, including the slate grey batik fabric with silvery clouds that made great space- I used all of that up! The final project is 24″ x 12.”

I did the quilting with the lovely yellow green Aurifil thread (50 wt) with lots of free motion swirls. The backing is a black and white “Constellation” fabric from my science fabrics and the binding is a lighter yellow green print. I was on target to beat my “under the wire” when the machine needed about 30 minutes of adjustment.

Close-up of quilting.