Tuesday 31 March 2009

Squares and Oblongs

Another quilt in the planning/soon-to-be-started phase is the Spring Squares & Oblongs quilt. It's also from a block featured on Marcia Hohn's site The Quilter's Cache, and again, I just noticed now that she gives instructions. Too late yet again :)

The only difference in my planning here is that I'll be strip-piecing and that my blocks will be 16" instead of 12".

I played around with some colours, which is always my greatest challenge in making a quilt, as it's the only step (apart from designing a pattern variation and quilting patterns) that requires creativity and can't be undone if it turns out ugly. Well, it can, but that'd be a HUGE waste of time and effort.

I like the blue-green leafy fabric tying the other colours together. I bought it at a quilt show and have been wondering ever since what I could possibly use it for... I matched the green and turquoise/blue, and once again opted for a non-pure-white variation: muslin. I had first envisioned a gradient of greens or similar, going from a dark center to a light outside, but the fabrics in my stash didn't really work for that. I was also missing a bit of a kick in the block, with just blue-green-white as colour scheme, so I played around with some orange-yellow colours, and that really gave it a boost. I didn't want to use the same fabric throughout, so I've scooped out 9 different yellow-oranges that'll be the center on the different (30) blocks. I think I can picture that in my head and like the final product. And because all the colours are so fresh, I'm calling it my Spring Quilt. Here are just three examples of the different centers, and I'll decide later if I'll use the second fabric, as it doesn't pop as much as the others (which might be nice in the final quilt, we'll see...).


Finally, I have to admit that I find it very difficult to start a quilt, i.e. make the first cut. I usually buy fabrics I like, so if I use them up, I won't have them any more if I really want to use them for another quilt. It's a dilemma, and probably explains why I hoard and never use. That has to change though, because I tallied up how many meters of fabric I've bought since September, and I'm approaching 300m. Someone else can figure out how many quilts I could make from that ;)

Cheerios and thanks for visiting my blog!!! I appreciate all your comments!

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Well I also have stresses with colours when starting a quilt. I try to keep it simple but have made some major blunders I can tell you.
I like what you have chosen. I always think either white or black makes a quilt pop out of it's usual look. Can't wait to see what you do here with those.

Helen in the UK said...

The colours look wonderful - full of spring promise!! Stash building is important, but you've certainly been busy accumulating 300m in a relatively short time! If you reckon on a generous 20m for a large quilt you probably have enough fabric to make 15 large quilts!!! So it is definately time to start using it rather than hoarding it. Enjoy :)