Yay! Another Quilt Crossed Off the List!

Another finish today! This one is 'An Uncertain Crossroad' started back in March 2015 as a Marsala color challenge. I'd been slowly collecting the drab, clay/maroon looking fat quarters for awhile {who knows why?} and jumped at the chance to incorporate them into a quilt.

Uncertain Crossroad is finished!

The quilt design had a couple influences {click on the link above for the first idea}. Together with the color challenge and a bit of secondary inspiration, it just sort of melded into something that felt right. I had a lot of fun stitching this particular quilt and the brighter, sparky circles still make me smile.

So graphic and fun!

One thing I've definitely discovered over the years is this: if you are continually drawn in to a specific color or color family and you don't know why? Don't sweat it. Just buy the occasional fat quarter in those colors and eventually, maybe even a couple years down the road, you really will find a way to build them into a quilt! It's actually quite fascinating to dig challenging prints/colors out of the stash totes and finally be able to bring them to life.

Love it laying in the sunlight....

Sometimes in very surprising ways! You can see that the color family {mixed medium and dark tones} of marsala is used as the background fabrics with the lighter strippy cross sections in what I'd call the lighter version of marsala--mostly mauves, light and/or dull pinks. Some of those fabrics seemed destined to remain in the stash totes forever as they were so... boring! Surprise, surprise!

Used in this pattern, all the colors, including the sparky colors used for contrast, make for a bold, unexpectedly graphic quilt. Who would have thunk it that marsala could be used in such a way! I certainly never would have.

I have returned again and again to Roderick Kiracofe's 'Unconventional and Unexpected' book as a way to soak in some wonderful make-do quilts and ponder the effects of this type of piecing. It's something I personally adore and have tried to incorporate into my quilting. If you click on that second link above, it will take you to a older post with the inspiration from this book. I bought the book sight unseen and have never, ever regretted it. Some books are important and meant to be on our bookshelves.

Love the circus poster below where the tiger is roaring! 

This quilt was deliberately put together in a 'not quite perfect' manner that nonetheless required matching cut-to-size background units. I would have to say, this is one of my favorite quilts ever made, in how the various prints ebb and flow throughout the quilt. The effect is probably more obvious in person, but there is a great, {subtle} background texture that would not be possible with a one-fabric background. Or probably the hand quilting?*wink

A close up of the circles and that perfect striped binding!

I was amazed to find the perfect striped fabric for binding in the bottom of one of my totes. I couldn't have found anything more perfect for the quilt, bought for a border that never worked out! Finishing this quilt makes me think about other ways to play with backgrounds and even possibly the idea of attempting another color challenge quilt some day. It feels like a good finish. Not giving this one away!

Marsala and An Uncertain Crossroad

My Marsala Challenge quilt top is finally sewn together! It's been such an interesting color to work with. When I first read about the color, I couldn't believe it had been chosen as the Pantone color of the year. Wowsers! Such a drab color. Now I can't believe how much fun I had working with it. Kinda funny to think there were actually fat eights and fat quarters of this stuff already squirreled away in my fabric totes!

A quick look at An Uncertain Crossroad on the floor...

And well..., yeah. Nobody had to twist my arm to buy it. If you really stop to think about it, this color is a foundation sort of color--an earth tone. Colors from nature are always among the first ones I'm drawn to even if some think they're on the shh... ugly side! Come to think of it, my favorite quilts have always seemed to incorporate a few questionable colors. Nature plays very well with colors like marsala, so why can't we?

Love the chunky circles!

For this challenge, I didn't want to run away from the color at all--or try and bury it in the details. I wanted to give it some respect! And although it was tempting to overwhelm the marsala with some of its prettier cousins, I decided to play with how the color might work as a base for making other colors shine or possibly intensify. All the very light strips of sashing in this quilt are what I consider to be the very lightest version of the color marsala. Some are more dreary looking than others, but used as an accompaniment for the unassuming marsala, they work very well. I really like how they provide a strong, vital foundation to help make the rest of the quilt sort of 'pop'.

An Uncertain Crossroad

As many of you know, I've also been playing with quarter circles for awhile. It was an easy jump to come up with the idea of blending the marsala challenge with yet another circle quilt. The older 'crossroads' block just seemed to perfectly bridge the gap between the antique look {where I get so much of my inspiration from} and the {slightly} more modern look I was hoping to achieve. It was a really great block for playing big slices of colors off of a receding background and I got to do my needleturn applique thing too. Win, win, all the way around.

And again....

Too, I love how my instincts steered me towards cutting the circle units in four different widths, making sure that the circles would come out less than perfect.  The crossroads in my life aren't usually what you'd call a smooth transition, so the somewhat jagged edges of these circles feel very right to me. For once I'm not adding a border onto my 61" x 72" quilt top as this one looks very happy as is! Time to link up with the Marsala Challenge over at On the Windy Side and play crafts. Thanks to the hosts for all their hard work and effort in getting this together!