Luscious planning!!

Do you ever look at fabric colors and say that they are LUSCIOUS???

That is the word that comes to mind with these….

They are from the “Ruby & Bee” collection by Windham Fabrics and are the subject of a challenge from the Modern Quilt Guild!!

I read about the challenge, saw the fabrics, and decided I wanted to try it!!

As I posted last week, I enjoyed working with 60-degree triangles in the background for my “Vintage Lamb” baby quilt and would like to try some more of them, so why not for this challenge!!

I tried to figure out ways to play with design possibilities and finally decided that the best way was to go “old school”……cut out small diamonds and start moving them around!!

I cut strips of wonder-under and ironed them onto each piece of fabric….

I cut out the piece and fused it onto lightweight interfacing and then prepared to cut diamonds!!

The first step was to sub-cut the strip into three 1-inch strips….

I used the 60-degree mark on my ruler to get an accurate initial cut…..

Once I had that…..

It was quick work to cut at 1-inch intervals all along the strips…..

And, before I knew it, I had tons of diamonds ready to go…..

I pulled out a small, flannel-covered, design board……

…..and now it is time to let the designs emerge….

I can see this being REALLY addictive!!!

It’s retreat time….

I am so excited because next week I will get to spend 5 days doing nothing but sewing, eating, and visiting with quilters. Could it get any better???

The problem with a retreat where you can work on anything that you want is trying to figure out exactly WHAT I want to work on!!

At the last retreat, I started a scrap quilt and worked on it…..

……until I ran out of fabric. When I got home I cut a bunch more squares so that project is ready to go.

I have another Angela Walters FMQ challenge (“Echos and Curves”) that I can work on…..

Although, I would prefer to wait until I can work on my sit-down long arm.

My list of future projects is LONG….LONG…..LONG, but it is hard to know where to start and figure out which ones I can easily work on.

So, can you help me? How do you decide what to take on retreats???

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!!

Pinwheels are coming along…

Last weekend I posted about making Pinwheel blocks….you can find the post HERE.

This weekend, I continued making blocks and have decided to turn them into a Twin-Size quilt that will be donated to one of the women’s shelters that our guild is supporting.

After I got the blocks made, I started thinking about a layout. My first thought was that I wanted them on point and alternating…..

As I looked at this, I kept seeing the streak-of-lightning that emerged between the rows of blocks and thought about putting different colors of fabric between the blocks…..

Ignore the two white squares….that was when I was trying something else.

……but I felt that adding a lot more color would decrease the excitement of the pinwheels.

Then I started thinking about keeping the background white and adding stems under each “flower”.

I like that idea but am having a heck of a time figuring out how to piece it without lots of inset seams!! My initial thought was to piece them into rectangle sections and then piece those sections together……

I will have some partial seams but no insets. So I will cogitate on that for the week and see if I can figure out an easy way to do it!!!

On the work side of my life, I have found something that is helping me during this super busy time. I calculated the number of tax returns that I need to do each week in order to be finished by April 15th. and, IF I finish all of them, then I don’t have to work on the weekend!! It is truly motivating me to stay in my office during the week!!!