I was naughty toward the end of August. I had already overspent on fabric, but when a Botany jelly roll showed up as the Quilter's Daily Deal for only $22 plus $5 flat-rate shipping, I really just had to have it. I couldn't really afford it, but it was a really good deal!
Anyway, while sitting on my couch Friday drinking coffee after waking up a good four hours earlier than usual, I decided to be as impulsive in using the jelly roll as I was in buying it.
I took inspiration (and some basic construction info) from this Moda Bake Shop tutorial and this doll quilt on Flickr.
I originally wanted to lay out my blocks like this:
But I didn't like it as much after laying it all out. The decision was made for me when I realized that the way I squared up my blocks meant that some of the seams would be impossible to line up using this layout.
So I played some more and wound up with this:
I'm much happier with this layout. I think the values work way better, and it's easier to see the effect. My roommate helped me brainstorm the top and bottom border.
One of my favorite parts about this quilt top is that it cost less than $30! That's pretty incredible. I think I'm going to bind it in the brown print I used for the ¾" mini-border between the blocks and the piano keys. Thoughts?
ps: Sorry for the less-than-stellar pictures. My camera has been acting funky, so I'm using my cell phone for the time being.
I've been in the process of designing something for my Fandango jelly roll. I got the "craving" for a jelly roll after seeing Aneela's quilt at Comfort Stitching. I've been wanting to do something with flying geese for a while, and the other night while perusing the Fresh Modern Quilts Flickr group, I found myself being drawn to stacked coins quilts, too.
I designed a geese and coins quilt that could be made with a jelly roll and some background fabric. I really love the problem-solving that comes with pre-cut fabrics — how many 4½" strips can you get from a jelly roll? It's fun to play with the math and try different ideas, maybe a border or make it taller and thinner or wider and shorter? There seem to be two types of quilters: those who love the math and geometry of it, and those who hate it. I am definitely the former! As such, I have a hard time playing around with color — I always try to make it mathematical in some way. For example, my Fandango jelly roll has 18 blue/aqua strips, 13 red-orange/pink strips, 3 yellow strips, 3 mostly cream strips, and 3 brown strips. A pre-cut is like a puzzle to me, and it's so fun to solve! Does anyone else do this? Or am I just crazy? :)
OK, so this is where I need your help:
Now that I've counted the colors/values, I need to decide how I want to play the color values in the quilt. I could do columns of geese in particular colorways, and have the coins be a mash-up of sorts, like this:
Or, I could make all my geese be my cooler colors, and have the coins be warmer tones:
I could also have warm-colored geese and cool-colored coins. ("Warm geese and cool coins" has a ring to it, no?) Or I could do a kind of gradient from cool to warm across, like this cool stacked coins quilt ... The possibilities go on, those are just the ones I made up in inDesign last night. I'm also hoping to avoid using white sashing, because I think the prints on creamy backgrounds will get lost, and also because I don't have much experience playing with different background/sashing colors. I really want to try using a darker background, possibly with a different texture to it. I ordered a few small cuts of quilters linen, moda crossweave and kaffe shot cotton so I could see and feel the textures and test some different colors. (I'm not telling yet which colors I got, because I want unbiased advice!)
What would you do, color-wise? What color/type of background fabric would you use? Any other thoughts/advice/questions?
A lot of people have been taking the "process pledge" and writing more about their process in creating a quilt. So I thought I'd take this opportunity to fill you guys in on my process.
I quilt in a corner of my living room, and I don't have space for a design wall. I also don't have any quilt design software (I don't think they make it for Macs). So I either sketch or use Adobe InDesign to lay out designs. Here's an example of an Adobe layout I made for the ORB Hexagon Quilt-Along:
I took individual photos of each of my hexagons, did a little photoshop magic, then arranged them in an InDesign document. Once I had everything arranged, I got it all put together:
I know it seems like a lot of work, but it would have taken most of my living room floor to lay it out, and then I would have been stepping on everything whenever I wanted to move something. It's just so much easier for me to drag the pictures around on my screen.
In other hexagon news, I was bored the other day after work, and I made myself a little bookmark:
What's your latest impulse project?
