I'd Say There's Never Too Much Applique, But of Course That's Not True!

I started on these flower blocks a couple months ago. Didn't get very far, very fast as I was really supposed to be finishing up other applique blocks. I might get spread thin with all the quilting projects, but I don't like a lot of opened ended applique. Just stresses me out.

Starting on the next round of applique

Anyway, right about the time that I was doing the prep work for these blocks, LeAnn over at Nifty Quilts posted her new tulip quilt. As I was looking at it, the style of flowers and the general layout really jumped out at me. Just too funny! I don't have the book 'Georgia Quilts' where she got her original inspiration, but I have looked at that quilt many times before. Pinterest? One of my other old quilt books? Not sure, but looky, looky, my doodling for this 'Flower Power' quilt obviously comes from the same exact inspiration! LeAnn's quilt is exciting and fresh, such a joy to look at. I'm a big fan of her work in case you couldn't tell!

Unlike her, I'm starting with mostly upcycled shirts for the backgrounds of my flowers, then digging in the stash for everything else. There is a piece of floral that I intend to use for the border or perhaps the inside strip sashing bits. We'll see. I do lots of pondering and turning things over and over in my head before even getting to the auditioning stage. Thus far, I am loving working with these bright pops of color. Simple applique plus bright, happy colors and it feels like an instant mood lifter! p.s. Don't be dismayed, there will be leaves attached at some point....

The loosey goosey notes & ideas

Sooo... this Ring Around project was the applique project getting in the way of Flower Power. Lots and lots and lots of time involved in the hand stitching and with 20 blocks? It can get a little boring at times. I piled the blocks up in an obvious spot in the quilt room just to help keep me motivated.

Looks so much better like this than hiding inside a tote...

Then there came the day when I had all the blocks done and tada! four rows sewn together too! Still not feeling especially pushed to plow through all the work to bring it to a quilt top, but eventually it all came together.

Waiting for a little more sewing time

During the original auditioning, I fiddled around with the sashing fabric {and even the cornerstones} probably more than I should of. It just didn't seem right that the quilt needed something so unassuming. There's a point sometimes where you wonder if your heart just isn't in it at that particular time of auditioning and then you realize.... This quilt really doesn't want something with a big, clever statement in that exact spot of the quilt. Ooookay. Message received!

The off-bacgrounds help make it interesting

In the end, to get the result needed, I actually flipped the sashing fabric over and used the backside. Uh huh. You can do that. I loved the nuanced stripey look to the fabric, but it needed to be toned down and let the applique blocks do their thing. The wonderful thing about the backside of the fabric {besides fading completely away} is the fact that it comes across more blue than green in those super subtle striped bits. With that, now the quilt has a lovely glow that somehow helps ease the aggressive bite to some of those rings. 

What is it about the color coral with blue?

Originally, I figured the cornerstones would need to be a black fabric, but that looked absolutely hideous. Coral and gray were also a non starter, and then I was left with some form of green or blue. Thankfully I had a couple pieces of teal fabric that fit the bill. The print was a little iffy on some of the pieces that I auditioned, but eventually I found the two fabrics that made the quilt do a little nod of appreciation. Yes, it could have been been one fabric instead of two, but I didn't have enough of the piece that ended up in the middle of the quilt. And that was the favorite, hands down. Had to be used somewhere! Which, interestingly enough, also helped add to the cozy glow of the quilt. Funny how sometimes all our little choices add up to something we don't even realize is building!

The second quilt in the Melon Patch series

It feels really good to finally get the abandoned background blocks from Melon Patch into something that helps make those center medallions shine. That sweet plaid fabric was from one of my youngest sons shirts that he wore quite a bit. One that I loved on him. Didn't want to just toss it away! There was a quilt in the book 'Mixing Quilt Elements' by Kathy Doughty that served as the impetuous for moving forward with these backgrounds, and though this quilt isn't exactly the same, many elements are very similar! Instead of her wedge templates, I cut my own from an acrylic template bought at JoAnns. Much easier and also, the wedges were a better size for these specific blocks.

Doesn't appear to need a border

Overall, I am very pleased with the look and feel to this low-key, but bursting with character, quilt top. At first I tried very hard to get the wedge quarter rings to match up exactly, but then I just gave it up completely. What am I doing? Why even bother? The sashing space helps transition  the 'Ring Around' effect tremendously and I'm certainly not someone to squawk if it's not perfectly perfect. Yeah. Not. Very. Important. At. All.

Original fabric pull

Another thing that I've done this week is something that happens pretty much all year long. It happens when I'm in the mood. When I'm stalling. When I'm down in the dumps about pretty much anything. When I can't get the motor started to put in the real effort and work of quilting. Whenever. You know how it is. You pull a couple stacks of marinating fabric stacks and attempt to fine tune. Let your subconscious  do its thing and just try to stay out of the way.

Adding a bit of spark

In the first picture is a stack of fabrics all chosen with the intention of trying to use up some of those bitter, brick reds that feel so very hard to get used up. Funnily enough, I actually liked the original stack almost enough to get started on a brand new quilt project during the winter. Then I dithered, second guessed, felt queasy in my gut and thought, 'no.... there's something not quite right about the blend'. I've approached it at least twice since then and had zero luck changing things up. It seemed content to be stuck.

Filling in the details

Earlier this week I pulled the stack out again and immediately decided that it needed some of those lighter blue/greens. Hmmm... could it be because I was just knee deep in those precise colors finishing up a quilt top? Hum, hum, humming along, I quickly added the salmon pink upcycled shirt {recently acquired from a thrifting excursion}. Perfection! Then it was obvious that there needed to be more of those super light pinks for a better transition. 

Maybe a tiny bit more depth with the green

And then some yellow gold hopped on for a ride. Not just any yellow mind you, but the exact perfect shade. So important to have a tiny bit of spark! And then it was a step back to peruse the effect. Hop on a chair and look down at the fabric on the counter. Hmm... Yep. Needs just a little bit more of the darkish shades of greens for impact. 

So yeah, that's pretty much how I work with the fabric stacks. As I'd said before, they rarely come out of the stash totes ready and raring to go directly into a new project. A little bit of fiddling here and there over several months {or a year} until finally, a day comes when the combination seems wholly complete. A big oops that I didn't use to recognize in my fabric gathering, is the tendency to dull things down and go for the soft, overly muted look. And then rush it directly into a quilt! The colors this happens with most often is usually a lot of the same colors that I wear. I don't even think to deeply about it in the moment! Quilt-making requires a bit more finesse though. Thankfully, I've learned to take the time {however much that is} to get things right. This stack seems good now. Belated it may be, but finally starting to see some cozy vibes happening! 

About Ready To Turn the Page To the New Year!

Got the Christmas Stars quilt into the hoop. Finally! I've been running so far behind on where the quilt line-up 'should be' this year that I just wanna shake my head. Not making a lot of progress on plowing through the completed quilt tops 'cuz I'm too busy making new.

Christmas Stars next up in the hoop

No matter. Christmas Day might be behind us, but I'm still very much in the mood to work on a quilt that looks like this. I made a total of four Christmas-look quilt tops within the last year and a half. Just to hand quilt during the holidays! This was one of the first two attempted and probably the most obviously holiday looking.

Almost ready to pin...

Very poor planning for fitting the individual blocks inside the quilting hoop though.*wink  How inefficient is this? Mostly I just get a larger background square into the hoop and then pull off the side clamps whenever they get in the way of stitching on the stars. So annoying to move the hoop every half an hour or so.

Keeping the stitching simple on this one!

And it always feels wonderful to have a true blue, absolutely finished quilt to finish out the year. This one has such a cozy vibe, it could have happily been laying across my lap for another week or two and I wouldn't even have cared. Love all the scrappy feels.

Strippy Triangles is a finish!

It was tricky to get try and get a good pic of the full quilt, so this will have to do. I'm sure it would be soo much better if I managed to get the quilt properly arranged during that 20 minutes of perfect lighting we seem to have this time of year!

Lots and lots of triangles

It took me almost three evenings to finally figure out exactly how those long skinny gray strips were going to have to be hand quilted. I tried vines with leaves, vines with berries, straight lines, and then finally ended up with a double stitched wavy vine without any extras at all. Still wasn't 100% sure until there was several stitched frames to look at. Okay. That should do it!

Hand quilting for the win!

All along I thought the binding would have to be black, but then.... Nope! The quilt wanted red for some reason. Good thing there was enough of the right colors hanging around in the stash totes or this would have had to be delayed for quite awhile. Fabric shopping is not exactly on the priority list right after the holidays, though of course I wish it was. No gift cards for Christmas this year, but I really can't complain. My youngest daughter gifted me with a box of Valdani perle cotton thread.*sigh  I'm so in love.... Would it be silly to design an entire quilt around a variegated thread color?

All ready for cuddling

Also included in this end-of-the-year post is the very last completed quilt top, Crossroads. Once I got the applique out of the way, then it was only a matter of cutting out the sashing strips and finding time to sew the rows.

Just a little underwhelming

As you can see, I was trying to stick fairly close to the antique quilt inspiration this time. Not ever exactly, but hopefully my interpretation rings true for the overall spirit of the quilt! How boring if it was a spitting image! This quilt has been in a couple different books I believe, but where I found it is: 'Quilts. An American Heritage' by Terri Zegart, a book published in 1994. I literally paid a dollar for at a quilt show guild booth a couple years ago. 

Taking another look at the original Inspiration

At first, I was just a little disappointed with the wispy, fade-away look it had {see first picture}. If you remember, I had a little play at this very same inspiration with this previous quilt, and somewhere along the way, the vibe of that particular quilt had went sideways on me too. In that case, I just shrugged and went with it. Basically, I was thinking 'Wow, here we go again! Just cannot seem to get this quilt figured out!'

Playing with border ideas

Since border additions are like my secret little addiction, I almost instantly talked myself into adding a blue/peachy pink triangle border. I mean really, before I even gave it any other serious thought, there I was doing the math and auditioning for the most likely scenario. Then I sorta stepped back from it all and thought, 'What am I doing?' A pieced border was going to blow this whole quilt vibe into a million pieces!

So much better with the subtle-y scrappy but plain border

So I folded the quilt top up and purposefully left it on a slow simmer for awhile. Sometime just before I fell asleep that night {the subconscious can work so fast!}, it occurred to me that maybe, maybe? the quilt might welcome a slightly larger, but definitely darker surround of fabric. Hmmm... And something like that probably wouldn't ruin the lovely feeling the original maker had so successfully ended up with. Of course I wanted to immediately run upstairs and check the idea out, but decided that was a very poor idea. Would probably freak everybody in the house out if mama got busy in the quilt room at 1:30 in the morning...

Ahh.. Surely you can see that this make-do, pieced but plain, border looks so much better already. You'll never believe how ugly the darker, almost dingy peachy pinks {mauve?} looked all by their lonesome! It was almost scary to even properly audition them. But attached to the quilt? They are Beea-utiful! Such a wonderful, lovely complement to the rest of the quilt. So very glad that I hit pause and took a few extra minutes to think it all through.

Still trying to learn what the secret really is!

It's always so exciting when the perfect solution makes itself known and all the cranky quilt problems can just drift away. I totally have a soft spot for these antique quilt interpretations that I've been dabbling with now for several years. I always think that if I can just successfully interpret a few of these fabulously unpretentious quilts {unpack their secrets}, then in some mysterious way, the look/feel/spirit of these quilts will somehow rub off onto mine. I'm earnestly trying because these are the best of best quilts to me. 

Now I'm dreaming up ideas for the cream fabric cut-outs from behind these gold circles. Which absolutely needs to be a series, right? Because there's definitely gonna be a quilt from those cut-out circles next. I mean, why not? Happy Happy New Year to All! We'll probably be having a quiet evening at home this year by ourselves, just me and the husband. Sounds good to me!

The Latest Quilty Progress

Believe it or not, I've been earnestly trying to scratch a couple long-ongoing projects off of the list. That open-ended, not-quite-a-quilt-top-yet list. This Improv. HST Medallion is one of the projects that has been in my sights for this fall. I kinda knew where it needed to go after the applique, just didn't have the heart to do it in the summertime. You know how it is with quilts of a certain color!

A few blocks organized for the border and leftover bits

First I quit fiddle-faddling around with how wonky the outside border should or should not be. It was just so exhausting. I ended up cutting out the hsts with the rotary cutter this time around and then let the 'wonkiness' be in the fact that I didn't square them up or try to match up any points. Turns out I'm more precise than I expected. Whoops!

Trying out the third border!

If you look closely, there's plenty of wonderful mistakes though, so I was happy with that. The quilt top looked so good at this point that I just almost called it a day and stuffed it in the finished quilt top drawers. So tempting.

Improv. HST Medallion quilt top finished up!

But no.....  66 inches just seemed a bit too small for one of my quilts. Onward ho! By this time I really wanted to be done. One more border and it's gonna be moving on regardless! I was running out of options for colors etc. so it was a simple matter to go darker {purple fabric} and a little bit dull {gold fabric} in order to not compete with the bright, sparky middle. 

I tried putting the darker triangles to the outside,
this looked much better

The dark purple was a cut up, recycled tunic shirt I had bought a couple years ago at a Rummage Room sale. It was a hundred percent cotton, but kind of loose weave fabric like linen. Hmm.. Definitely not cutting things too far off grain or everything in the outside border would be waving back and forth like a flag!

So glad the little bright tulips were added!

I'm pretty happy with the way things turned out overall, although I do have to laugh. How does almost everything around here {quilty-wise} end up being boxed in and tidied up eventually? Just can't seem to help myself trying to contain all the wild bits I guess. Still pondering the two purple hst's on the outside corner though. Could be better if those two corner squares were solid gold colored....

Really sparky looking quilt!

It's rapidly turning into fall here in Eastern Washington and so the colors in this quilt have been an absolute delight to work with. I kind of figured it would work out that way! Love it when I start seeing the trees turn yellow and all those other gorgeous fall tones! This quilt may be a limited color palette but it's not the least bit boring. I can totally see this quilt being pulled out in the future just for a Autumn vibes pick-me-up.

Even looks good folded up. Maybe I'll just leave it this way?

The hand quilting has been moving along so well on the 'Patchwork Garden' quilt, that I knew it was time to get another top into the hoop. Or at least ready to be put into the hoop! So not my favorite thing to do these days but you know, it's all part of the progress and at least hand quilting doesn't require very many pins.

A new quilt getting ready for the hoop

You might remember this one, Bullseye Medallion from a couple years ago. I've been really hoping there would be time to slide this one into the line-up for finishing up this year. Wasn't quite sure how to approach the quilting pattern {still don't know!}, but just love, Love the colors on this one so very much! It started out as an ode to making the most of certain fabrics, not cutting them too small and/or losing the effect of the prints.

That little piece of red vintage fabric on the corner!

Letting the fabric make the statement? Whatever. It totally made sense at the time. I played with a small, different element in every border just to break up the monotony of the 5" borders. A few people tried to warn me off the idea of making every border the very same width; however, I was intrigued with the challenge of attempting to make it look good. 

The floral basket handles {leftover from a long ago project} are my favorite part of the quilt. Something about how the printed fabric below sort of fades into the handles really charms me. Or maybe my fave part is the wide, red, retro looking circle in the center? The one that makes me want to do more with circles and applique in the center of a quilt? So many ideas to think about! 

You don't have to iron your quilt backings like a mad-woman
when you're hand quilting. Just get the seams tidy...

While I was totally procrastinating about applique prep {the stuff that needs done for the pear blocks}, I went ahead and sewed several quilt backings together. Yes, all for finished quilt tops waiting patiently in the drawers. I wouldn't sew random quilt backings together and cross my finger they would work! I think I managed to sew 8 or 10 before running out of steam! The one pictured above is probably about the best of the lot, unless you prefer backings made out of a total of one yardage. 

I tend to buy a smallish {yardage} amount of clearance fabric {sometimes the rest of a bolt}, and/or make do with whatever pops up in the stash in complementary colors. Yep. A lot of the larger pieces have been gifted to me and yeah, they're not always pretty prints. In fact, most of these backings are not at all fabulous. I get that! But what can I say? My creative juices are pretty much directed solely towards the fronts of the quilts. The rest of it just sort of ends up being make-do and cheap, and I'm completely on board with that. Usually..., until I see Julie's lovely quilt backings! Then I'm super jealous and think I'll just have to do better next time. But I never do.

I don't really know why I was in the mood to sew quilt backings for almost two straight evenings. Such a weird thing to want to do. Something I've figured out in all my adventuring, is that this sort of thing works out very nicely much later on when I'm actually in the mood to sandwich and pin a quilt. Might as well take advantage of wherever the mojo leads us!

A pieced together batting usually works out well for 
the baby quilts and saves money too!

The latest baby quilt was sandwiched and quilted at the same time as the Bullseye Medallion quilt. I have been dragging my heels so bad about this quilt from the very start of the making. Ughh. Just don't know what the problem is with baby quilts lately! I've already machine quilted 'in-the-ditch' around all the long pink sashing bits. And the shorter pink and/or peachy ones. Will probably go back and do some quick hand quilting {with Perle Cotton of course!} inside the brick blocks. All that can probably be done in one day if I get really diligent about it. Then the binding and yay! Giving it away! Which is the very best part.

Next thing will be cutting the circles in quarters and
sewing in the blue/green strips.

And of course, I had to start another quilt project. It's Fall. This is Me we're talking about. It's the Right Thing To Do. And I couldn't resist, obviously. Checking things off the list can only lead to starting new things, right? I'm making this one along the lines of Quarter Circles Round #2, a quilt that ended well, but didn't behave exactly as originally intended. I was trying to do an interpretation of an antique quilt and somehow hand sewed the circles onto the background squares 'on point' instead of how I wanted them. Or something. Still not sure quite sure what happened with that quilt, however well it managed to rescue itself. I'm going to study the original picture a lot before sewing these so hopefully, hopefully!, the same mistakes are not made as before. And I'm only working with nine crossroads blocks this time around, mostly because these are larger. Should go pretty fast once I get started!

Oh the angst and the frustrations of a quilt that takes a turn in the wrong direction. It's haunted me ever since and I'd really like a do-over. Do you ever feel that way with one of your older quilts? Imagine my pleasure when I stumbled upon some largish gold fabric cut-outs from behind some older applique project. Already cut out in circle shapes? Easy peasy to cut out a few more and even more fun that I left them in the same, not-quite-perfect circular shape. Hmm... This could be loads of fun. It's almost like serendipity!

Don't be surprised if I don't get back to this blog for several weeks. Lots of family stuff  in the works, no doubt to be taking up loads of my time. It's good to have hand quilting waiting in the wings and the applique bag packed up and ready for business. Of course, my good intentions are generally more than the actual output when life gets super busy. We'll see how it all shakes out! By the way, my opened ended quilt project list is now down to five projects, with another two 'gonna-happen-soon' from abandoned bits from the Melon Patch project. That feels like an excellent place to step back and take a short break!

So Much Fun to Finish up a Forever Project!

Well, all good things must come to an end. The HST Medallion quilt is completely finished up! All 102 inches! One of those projects started sort of by impulse, but not really. I'd looked and looked and LOOKED at a picture of an antique quilt, wistfully thinking about how cool it would be to own one.

HST Medallion is done!!!!

Then one day, it just happened. I found myself putting together the centerpiece of a four year long project! It happened in fits and starts of course. Things this complicated always do around here. 

A lot going on with this one...

How in the world could I possibly make myself work on one quilt and one quilt only? Yeah. Not happening. I folded HST Medallion in half and laid it where I normally take the quilty pictures. Just so you could see the scope of how large this one is. She's a big 'ol beauty! When I moved the table out of the way {with the help of one of my daughters}, and tried to take a picture of the entire thing? It was basically a fail. It really needs to be hung up on a line and a pic. taken from a good distance. The light wasn't very friendly in that area of the room either. C'est la vie.

Trying to get a picture of the full quilt

I'd say that I don't know what possessed me to make this particular quilt, but that wouldn't be true. For some rather peculiar reason, I'm happiest when there is one forever type quilt project lurking about in the quilt room, be it all piecing, or all applique, or even a mix of the two. Call me crazy. It's almost definitely gonna be happening again some day!

All hand quilted

For one thing, I don't like feeling inadequate or incapable of making any sort of quilt that I put my mind to. Even terribly difficult quilts can be accomplished one little baby step at a time! Another thing that has occurred to me is that I might possibly relish? having an {almost} impossible task so that everything else seems quite doable by comparison. So silly, but it works.

The lighter blue hsts are facing the opposite
direction, on purpose....

You'd be amazed at how much I've accomplished through the years avoiding these super challenging quilts of mine! Or maybe you wouldn't. I've been pretty transparent about my love/hate relationship with the taking-forever, entirely too tedious, horribly intimidating quilt projects that crop up every four or five years.

My favorite view of a quilt

This quilt wasn't the most complex in the world, but it does have an awful lot of half square triangles in it. And precision sewing is not exactly my forte! If you look closely, there's just a little tiny bit of wave happening on the outside border in a couple places.*sigh  I haven't washed the quilt either, like I love to do. Though I love the crinkly look, I'm terrified some of the blue fabric might have a bleeding issue. Once it's washed up some day in the future, I'm pretty sure that slight waving issue will be less obvious, but for now we're all good. Totally content to wait!

Three impossible tasks that somehow 
made it to a finish!

Not that I'm ashamed of the issue at all. This quilt is way beyond what I ever hoped to accomplish back in my early days of quilting! If you'd have told me 20 years ago that I'd be making any one of the three stacked quilts {in the previous photo}? I'd have laughed in total disbelief!

For a quick trip down memory lane, I pulled the two other {very labor intensive} quilts that seemed to take forever and a day. I mean, there are lots of time consuming quilts around here, but these are the grand poobah's of sheer grit and determination getting me through! All three quilts are ones that I most definitely despaired over at different times and had to really push myself to get in another hour or two of work done here and there. Just to say that I hadn't given up on them! And I've got a sneaky suspicion that Melon Patch might be trying to join the list. But that's a story for another day.

You can read about the Pickle Dish quilt here and Worry Baskets here. All three quilts take me right back to a certain day years and years ago in a small town grocery store, impulsively buying a quilt magazine. I was completely mesmerized by a specific quilt in it, though I didn't have a single clue how to get started on making my own. And no, I never did make that particular quilt! It took a lot of years, many ups and downs, trial and error, learning, learning, learning, but now? I darn well will make whatever quilt I put my mind to. And you can guarantee, they'll be a whole lot better than anything pictured in that long ago quilt magazine.... 

I Think This is Called Momentum

I have a rather large list of opened ended UFO's at the moment. Imagine me wincing right now! It's definitely more than is normally allowed to happen around here, even with the typical do-what-feels-good-in-the-quilting-room attitude that generally reigns supreme here at Quilty Folk.

Moody 9-Patch is a completed quilt top!

As usual though, my brain keeps coming up with ever more interesting ideas to try. Yep, there are unquestionably gonna be new and improved quilts in my future! In this vein, I decided to dedicate myself to at least one more 'finish' here in the short term. Once a project is dumped onto the completed quilt top list, then the burgeoning sense of overwhelm seems to drastically reduce. People ask how I can have so many open ended projects going on, but the wholly, 100% finished quilt tops just don't have the same effect. All the major decision making struggle and angst is done and over with at that point! Right now, at least part of the problem with the too-long UFO list is this: I have a couple quilt tops that unexpectedly jumped OUT of the drawers and demanded more work done on them. So not playing fair! 

Loving the effect of the floral

In the spirit of crossing things off the list, the 9-patch seemed like an easy target. Like I've stated before, it was started in November of last year and then essentially forgotten about. In my memory, it was started in a rare moment of basically looking around the quilt room and wanting/needing to start something new. Now, sometimes {rarely} I'll go totally off the rails and just dive into something super spur of the moment and not very well thought out. Most times though when this particular feeling overtakes me, I look to the stacks of marinating fabric sitting around the quilt room. 

This is where I've spent countless hours pondering all kinds of fabulous to-me options. This is dream time. These fabrics have been pulled out numerous times in a period of months and years. Stacked and restacked. Fabrics and colors tossed or perhaps newly introduced? Ideas, patterns and design concepts distilled into an important nugget or two. What story does this specific blend of fabric want to tell?

Kind of a rich look to this one!

Like so many other projects started around here, Moody 9-patch ended up being an interpretation of an antique quilt. That probably sounds relatively simple. It can be, but this time it most certainly wasn't. I have played with this pile of fabric many, many times in the past couple years and just couldn't wrap my mind around which fabric should go where. I considered several different other design ideas too. No dice. No matter what direction my musings may have taken me on any particular day {and you can bet a few were vastly different than this oh-so-simple setting}, I would always come back this basic 9-patch with large sashing units. Apparently, that part HAD to be!

Simple but sweet

Most probably, it was the floral fabric holding me back. Though I love and adore them, {why else would I buy them?}, florals often times throw my brain into a tizzy of doubt and confusion. And I positively dread cutting into them. How do you successfully cut up and incorporate a strong floral into a quilt design without it completely overpowering everything? Or cutting it into without ruining the floral gorgeousness. Is it even going to look good cut into little squares etc.? And then, what if the floral turns out to be a huge mistake {the quilt wants a geometric print instead?}. You won't KNOW until the quilt top is near completion. What a disaster that would turn out to be! Ah, well. Eventually it's time to do something even if it turns out to be wrong. Gotta love those days of longing to start something new. They oftentimes turn out to be wonderful permission to plunge right into the thoughtfully, oh-so-carefully charted path of 'unknowns'!

Does this moody looking quilt top make you smile too? I'm sure you were wondering why I didn't just toss the floral fabric and do something easier. Well....., would I be sitting here smiling if it was just any old boring fabric used instead of that fantabulous print? Part of the thrill is meeting and conquering the challenge, whatever it may be. When intuition and instinct is telling us something needs to be done a certain, specific way, then it's our job to go the extra mile to make sure that it happens. We're not going to be happy with the end result if we know within ourselves that we've cut corners on what could have been.

Gonna be fun to hand quilt this one some day!

When cutting the floral strips, there ended up being a couple strips where the floral design aligned along the edge instead of being centered. Not having enough fabric to properly fussy cut, I determined to use these specific units along the outside edges of the quilt. Problem solved!

Overall, it was a great play with color, really stretching me. The floral fabric is actually a very deep, brownish purple fabric at base, but I didn't want a purple quilt, which is what I figured I'd get if I went too 'matchy-matchy'. Luckily I had enough yardage with four or five different fabrics to create the blue 'background' effect, something I hoped would accentuate the floral and kind of show it off. They tied in well with the blue flowers in the floral without being an exact color match. I like that. Too much perfection bores me to tears! 

One blue fabric was almost too dull to use, but I basically just held my nose and started cutting. Even after I dug through the stash totes, it was so much better than anything else, I felt like there was no other choice. It's amazing and wonderful how forgiving color/tones can be when you go 'scrappy'! 

In the case of the cornerstone squares, I deliberately used the lighter, but obviously more drab looking purples. Wowsers have these fabrics been difficult to find a good home for through the years! Those areas needed to be an obvious contrast without competing in any way with the floral, but still tie back in and transition well with the dark brown. The more 'brownish' of those drab purples tended to go to the outside edges of the quilt so as to not deliberately bring down the sparkle in the quilt. 

The horizontal sashing was actually harder to decide on because I absolutely didn't have what seemed like a best option. Not that I knew for sure what that might be! And so I dithered and dithered until finally going with that very dark brown fabric. It's almost purple, it's so deeply brown. Truly, I thought that particular area of the sashing needed to be a medium tone but Meh! What do I know? lol  Make the call and just move on is generally how I roll these days. Seriously, what would be the point of trying to use up these languishing stash prints and then run to the quilt store for a flawless fabric match in yet another area of the quilt? I'm not saying I'll never, ever do that, but I'm generally gonna try everything else possible first!

4 Blocks on the wall

Another project that I'm trying to work on a little every day or so is these tulips blocks. Which didn't start with these applique blocks, but rather the abandoned bits from another tulip quilt! Of course. Are you surprised? So many of my projects start with little seeds from another quilt and then spill into each other willy nilly until I end up with a series of ideas! 

Auditioning the hourglass units

So... the little hourglass units were the actual 'start' of the previous tulip quilt, an AHIQ prompt and now this one too. Somehow I had cut them out the wrong size and rather than fixing them or starting new, I promptly ditched the idea altogether and went in a totally different direction. Which was fine except for the fact of  all these little hourglass units wasting away!

Looking better with more blocks

Uh huh. Can't have that. And why not have another tulip quilt? It's been very, very tedious sewing up all these hourglass units and I can only handle so much before moving on to another project. Finally I'm at the point where all 196 units are sewn together, points trimmed off and ready to go. Honestly, I've worked on them off and on for weeks!

Do I even need more blocks?

Just need these tulip blocks finished up and it'll be on to the sewing up rows phase. At first, I wasn't at all sure about the leaves. My parents are both gardeners, as are a couple siblings and even my daughter. Tulip quilts have these wide, flowy leaves that never ever show up in quilts for some reason. For this particular quilt I wanted to at least make a nod to the reality of nature! Four blocks in made me frown, then six blocks in I was cocking my head over to the side saying 'maybe' and now at nine blocks on the wall, I'm finally sold on the idea.*whew!  Okay. This will do. Onward ho! And I'm also settling in to the idea of having the hourglass units join together with the brown square in the middle. Things are progressing. What more can we ask for?