an experiment

I was so pleased and excited after finishing my cool colored lap quilt that I decided to try something new and different. I've been seeing a lot of string quilts on quilting blogs lately, and I've been wanting to try one. The real experiment, though, has to do with fabric collections: many quilters these days appear use collections of fabric designed to go together, and this is something I haven't yet tried. Connecting Threads had a fabric collection called Riviera that contained several fabrics that I really liked, as well as some that I don't think I ever would have picked out individually, but that were designed to compliment the ones I do really like. So, when a fat eights pack of this fabric collection went on sale, I bought it, intending to experiment and see what it was like to use a whole collection of fabrics together.

Since I only had fat eights (11" x 18" pieces) of each, I made 7.5" squares. I wanted to use the solid brown in the middle of the squares, and that was the largest square I could make using 11" cuts of the brown. I got 12 1.5" strips of brown, then cut 1.5" and 2" strips of the colors. I added them randomly, following the directions in "p.s. I quilt's" block o'strings tutorial.

Overall, I'm not crazy about the results: I really like the look of the string blocks, but I'm still not entirely sold on this fabric collection as a whole, at least as I've used it here. It's growing on me, but I think this will mostly be an interesting learning experience. We'll see what happens with it.

Wishing you all low-stakes opportunities to experiment,
~Phosphorelated