New fabric fun!!!

I have recently become friends with Sarah Watson (@hisarahwatson), a licensed artist and designer. She recently produced a new fabric line through Cloud 9 Fabrics, and she asked me to design a quilt highlighting her fabrics!!

I was SO… SO… SO… excited when the package arrived in the mail and I was able to see the fabrics that I would be working with…..

The fabric line has the title “INTO THE WOODS” and is SO much fun. Just look at these selvages….

…and the individual fabrics have wonderful names…..Forest Floor, Snail Trails, Look Close, Turkey Tail, Quite a Collection and You’ve Earned It!!

The fabric is an organic cotton and feels amazing. I really noticed the difference in quality when I was ironing it. It was like ironing butter!!

I am SO excited about playing with these but am also a little nervous about trying to design a quilt from them.

As I say so many times…..

The Flying Geese are airborne…

Over the last two days, I have been walking thru the process of designing a quilt using leftover scraps. Here is the third….and final….. installment!!

As I continued thinking about the outside border, I remembered some other, smaller blocks that were in the stash…..

At some point, I had sewn them together to make Half-Square Triangle blocks.

And, if I put TWO of them together, I get another flying geese…..

….Sort of…..

So now I could use these pieced Flying Geese to finish the side border…..

….keeping the triangles with green outlines for the top and bottom.

The geese on the outside are a bit abstract and only a few of them actually show up as geese, but I think that it is working okay…..

So, let’s add one more border to tie it all together…..

I am pleased with the result and really had fun playing with the Flying Geese designs.

Oh no…..

There are still some leftovers!!!

I guess that they will become seeds for the next time Alice and I have a tea party “Down the Rabbit Hole”.

Now if I can just remember what I was working on before I found these scraps???

Does anyone remember????

Is this how you design a quilt??

As I posted yesterday, I have fallen down Alice’s Rabbit Hole and am having a wonderful tea party there!!

When I left you, I had four columns of fairly boring Flying Geese blocks. But where were these geese heading??

I first decided that they didn’t need to all fly North and South, and started playing with their placement…..

Okay, I like that idea. So let’s fill in the blanks and look at it again…..

Now it needs something on the sides…..wonder what I can do with all of those other bits that I had leftover…..

Yikes….that’s a bit much and WAY too hard to piece!!!

What if I did it this way…..

That looks great, but again, way too complicated, and I would have to make more black and white strip triangles…..so NO!!

Since I can’t make up my mind, let’s go ahead and finish the interior by adding some sashes and borders….

What happens if I add some green to the design…..

Looks good so let’s add some more green…….

I like the color addition but now it is looking muddy again!!

Okay, let’s take some of those apart….

….and try something else!!

Come back tomorrow for the ending of this “How NOT to design a quilt” saga!!

Design by committee?

Last week on our guild retreat, I planned to make a baby quilt top for a great-niece. Her mother (my niece) is the twin sister of the mother of the twins that I made quilts for a few months back. Are you confused???

Anyway, these were those quilts….

As I started thinking about a quilt for this new cousin, I wanted to make it in the same style but in little girl colors, and in this case, peach and green!!

And, instead of African animals, I planned to used Teddy Bears.

I started out by fusing the bears to the first panel and then adding strips as I moved up the quilt.

I was feeling that it was a bit top-heavy and several people began making suggestions as to how to fix the problem. I took a quick snap of the process…..

…and realized that we had managed to make it super heavy in the middle.

Instead of continuing to gnash over it, I decided to go for a walk to clear my head. After a few minutes in the great outdoors…..

….I started feeling better…..

When I got back, I took the part that I really liked (the bears and below) and replicated that at the top of the quilt. That way it was better balanced. Then I filled in with strips until I was happy with the way it looked……

I was looking forward to quilting this piece but waited on that until I got home again.

Come back tomorrow to see how the quilting worked!!

TOO… MANY… OPTIONS!!

Tomorrow I am heading off for a 4.5-day quilting retreat….YEA!!!

But, you have no idea how much pressure this puts on me!!

I simply can’t figure out what I want to work on during those days. I have a baby quilt to make and am organized for that, but it shouldn’t take more than a few hours. So WHAT am I going to do for the other 4 days??

I have a large box of 2.5-inch scraps and another one of 2.5×4.5-inch scraps and I really want to do something with them.

So I have been planning…..and planning…..and planning!!

I am planning to work with darks, mediums and lights so I designed TONS of blocks using those three colors…….