Project Quilting 10.6: Craving Chocolate

This is the last week of Project Quilting Season 10.  PQ Challenge Designer, Trish Frankland, chose Craving Chocolate as the final challenge theme.  Of course, I did lots of research and brainstorming, aka sample a wide variety of chocolate treats in search of design inspiration!!  There were so many design possibilities that I considered over the course of the week.  As the brainstorming continued, I pulled out nearly every brown fabric and scrap that I could find in my stash!!  And given my strong preference for bright, saturated colors, there are very few brown fabrics to be found in my stash.     

Chocolate Inspiration

With less than 24 hours until the entry deadline, it was time to stop sketching and start sewing!  I chose two Michael Miller Cotton Couture solids (Cappucino and Brown) that were included in my Michael Miller Fabric Ambassador Welcome box, a colorful geometric print, and some silver Lamé (backed with Pellon Shape Flex, a lightweight woven fusible interfacing) to piece together some chocolate bars.  While I pieced together several bars that were packaged in a foil wrapper and sleeve, I also wanted to have a few chocolate bars that were partially or completely unwrapped to reveal the milk chocolate and dark chocolate.

To piece my partially unwrapped bars, I layered two wrapper bases with one right side up and the other wrong side up, on top of two solid brown strips with an extra inch for extra seam allowance.  I chose an angle and sliced through all four layers (two wrapper bases and two brown strips) and discarded the small triangle/wedge from the wrapper base (just to the right of my cut). 

Chocolate Layers

By layering my bases right and wrong side up, I was able to get mirror angles for my two units.  And by using solid brown fabrics, I had the option of using either side to create two different pairings.

Chocolate Pairs

Using the pairing on the left above, I made sure the two halves of my chocolate bar matched angles.  I then flipped the brown fabric along the diagonal line.  When I first started sewing angles, I used a ruler to find my seam allowance and starting sewing position, but can now spot the sweet spot as I feed the units through my sewing machine equipped with a quarter inch foot.  For some reason the brown in the last photo is much darker but it is the same milk chocolate bar.

Finding the Sweet Spot for Sewing Angles

Here is the dark chocolate bar in the pairing above which has a mirror image angle.  Same process and you can see the two assembled chocolate bars side by side below.

Chocolate Bar Assembly Line

My little sewing factory cranked out 32 chocolate bars depicting different stages of packaging and chocolate consumption.  Now it was time to play with different laytouts:  rows, columns, chinese coins, rail fence...oh the possibilities!!  I also played around with the idea of incorporating some brown bias tape to create a chocolate river, as well as a few golden wrappers in honor of Willy Wonka's Golden Tickets.  I also chose this beautiful peacock blue Cherrywood hand dyed fabric for my background.

Chocolate Display Options

Since there was so much going on in terms of angles, colors of chocolate (milk and dark), the busy print (and the future possibility of adding bias tape chocolate ribons), I chose the clean look of a simple 7 x 3 grid for my final layout.

Chocolate Grid

Most candy bars companies pour the melted chocolate into a special mold to create a rectangular grid and making it easy to snap off smaller chunks which are the perfect size for making S'mores!!  You can read more about how the Hershey Chocolate and Confectionary Corporation had to legally protect the iconic design of the Hershey bar.  A gridded texture was stitched into each chocolate bar using two different widths of blue painter's tape: 0.75" for the vertical lines and .94" for the horizontal lines.

Quilting is a Snap with Blue Tape

Staying true to the challenge theme, Chocolate (#2360) Aurifil 50wt thread was used to quilt all the chocolate bars.  I wish I could say I chose the thread for its chocolatey name, but it was the only dark brown thread I had in my stash, and it blended beautifully with both the milk chocolate and dark chocolate bars!  Medium Teal (#1125) Aurifil 50wt was used for all the background zig zag meander quilting, with Dove (#2600) used for all the piecing.  The wrapper portions themselves were left unquilted, bringing them forward in the design while also preserving the sleek packaging appearance.

Racing the Chocolate Bar, Finishes 26" x 27"

Grab your favorite chocolate bar and check out all the amazing entries for this week's Craving Chocolate PQ challenge.  Don't forget to vote for your favorites (starting Sunday after 1:30 PM PST through Friday late afternoon)!!  Be sure to check out mine (#75)

Many thanks to Kim Lapacek and Trish Frankland for hosting another fabulous season of Project Quilting!!!