Staying Focused

It feels so good to check a couple more projects off of the open-ended projects list. Gives me just a little bit of breathing room for the brand new starts. 'Cuz there's always gonna be new projects here, there and maybe every where!

Once again, it's a finish!

It was a relatively quick finish for the Ormes Inspired quilt once I put my mind to it. Just had to grit my teeth and plow through the last little bit of hand work on the batik fabric lettering. After that, there was a very small amount of effort to sew the block back into the border. Once that was done, then it was super simple to sew the white tulip over the top of the 'I' and wallah! the whole thing was back to being a true blue finish. I am so much happier with the final result now,  than ever before. Love how the appliqued word makes it feel more special.

AHIQHourglass/Tulip quilt

The AHIQHourglass challenge quilt/#3 in the tulip series quilt top is finished up too. I am so amazed and happy with the overall vibe to this quilt! All the hourglass units were sewed together in sets of four and then chopped off willy nilly at the ends. This makes for less-than-perfect economy block {look} cornerstones at the sashing, but I don't see that detracting from this utility style, improv. quilt at all.

The full quilt

Using the raspberry pink background fabric really amped up the cozy, almost romantic look and feel to this quilt. That was a bit unexpected, but so much fun to just 'roll' with! As always, I tried to push with certain fabric combinations, trying for blendy prints as well as throwing in a few larger print fabrics too. My default ever seems to be for using 'safe' fabric combo's and I've tried and tried and tried to break that habit throughout the years. Quilts tend to have a much more interesting feel when the fabric group as a whole takes on a personality! When all the prints are exactly the same scale, then the vibe tends toward boring. At least in my opinion. You're welcome to feel differently! 

All the leaves are blue in better lighting....

This same scale thing is sometimes a very good idea in certain areas of a quilt. You can't deny that some places will benefit greatly from this application! It helps give off a uniformity of spirit that seems a bit more peppy than simply using 4 yards of the same exact fabric and of course, enables all of us 'use-up-the-stash' lovers to really excel. 

In this quilt, I used very similar prints for the sashing {with both the creams and the gray-browns}, thus giving more room to push on the value in the gray-browns. Would it have looked fine with all the gray-browns being the same exact value? I think so, but mixing them up helps {subtly} to bring energy and movement to the quilt. If there would have been larger contrast used in the scale of the sashing prints, then there would have been less movement throughout, and undoubtedly, a  much choppier look.

For the eye popping 'look at me' prints {go ahead, pretend with me here!}, I definitely focused in on the tulip shapes and the stems. With the stems, it was easy. The same fabric is on repeat for every single block, but feels more engaging than one solid or blendy-type fabric combined with this particular background. If they become a little less noteworthy and more mundane due to repeats, meh. You probably like more chaotic looking quilts than I prefer! 

In a quilt like this, every single tulip could have been a busy, cool looking print. Alas, that's not my quilt stash. So, then it's time to make-do. Basically, I just play with a stack of fabrics, trying to mix and match interesting prints with change-ups in the color and value of blander looking fabrics until I get to 20 magic fabric pairings--the number of blocks needed here. If I have to toss out fabrics here and there, then that's exactly what happens. 

It's pretty obvious what I did for the leaves, mixing up both the color value and the print scale. In every quilt, there are decisions that inform the next move or phase of a quilt. With scrappy quilts, most of us are never quite sure what we intend to do until we are actually doing it. Experience makes it far easier to find the right opportunities to change up scale or value or when it's probably best to rely on a similar look/feel fabric mixture.

This one might be hard to get rid of some day!

It was difficult to feel comfortable using the med. pink for the tulips, but in the end, I really had no choice. What is contrast really, but what you make it to be? They couldn't all be red, white or black, either and the lighter pink had to go somewhere! Plus, I adored the sassy sweetness of adding slightly lighter pink over the darker pink. After all the applique was stitched,  I even threw out one fairly interesting printed white fabric tulip and substituted one more pink fabric tulip. Just because. 

Did you notice the orange tulip clear up in the far left corner of the quilt? I like how it ties back in with the larger print pink and orange floral fabric down towards the bottom of the quilt. Sometimes it pays to echo a cuckoo color in some other area of the quilt and since I wanted to use that scrap of larger floral? Super easy decision even though a part of me, that left brain, 'don't be a crazy' side, wanted to scrap it all. When I say that it was easy, that's because experience has taught me the importance of taking these sorts of chance in order to make a true 'me' quilt. You would take an entirely different risk and achieve a much better outcome--for you!

Always have to add something that
fades into the background!

So yeah. Blah, blah, blah, blah. This is me telling you why I love and adore this particular quilt. Yes, it was an impulse make. Yes, I was trying to use up the hourglass units. The thing is, successful scrappy don't generally happen entirely by accident. I don't care what people tell you, throwing a big pile of fabric in a bag and grabbing whichever pops up next, rarely works out wonderfully! 

Loving this quilt!

In most cases, there needs to be a measure of controls set into place. The when, where and how? That is entirely up to you and YOUR vision. Try to make your color palette, print scale and values WORK, but don't work exceedingly hard making it happen. Does that make any sense? Have a little fun and take chances and gradually {so gradually you might not even notice at first},  you'll be going with whatever flow the quilt quite organically generates. 

Do you think I wasn't the teensiest bit concerned about sewing all the leaves in blue? My mantra through the years has basically distilled into this one pragmatic thought: If a set of fabrics look good together in a stack, then they'll look great together in a quilt. Just pick a spot for each color and make it happen! As you struggle through the process time and again, you'll naturally get better at sorting out the proportions and pesky {but quite specific} details that take it to the next level. 

Rhi's quilt

Okay, time to get off my soapbox. After last weeks improv. adventure, it seemed like an excellent time to tackle the rest of my daughters dress quilt. Scrappy, improv. coins sounded fun and quite a good distraction from all the hand work currently filling up my evenings.  

No need to overthink it!

Though green is actually a challenging color for me to use as a predominant color in a quilt, it was the only way forward for the next round of this quilt. Try as I might, the blue fabrics {that I really, really wanted to use}, look completely uninterested in happily responding. Too much black and white bumped the quilt up to formal looking, instead of 'charming' {not a suitable look for those sunflowers} and yellow made the celery green center look like puce. I was doomed. Green it was! Next round will bring the quilt up to a good lap quilt size and feature more of the large floral. Trying like mad to keep this one as uncomplicated as the quilt will allow!