Sunday, January 23, 2011

two weekends, two quilt tops!

Last weekend I finished the Color Blocks quilt top; this weekend I finished assembling the stripey quilt top! Now it's time to get some quilting done. I'm trying to decide how to quilt both tops. For the stripey quilt, I'd like to emphasize the "woven" nature of it by quilting the warm and cool blocks differently, and I think I'd like to use a more organic quilting pattern to contrast with the linear nature of the blocks themselves. I have no idea what kind of quilting pattern to use, though. Or what color thread; a silver grey, or something bright? Different colors on the warm and cool squares? So many decisions that could give this quilt such different personalities.

Any ideas?
~Phosphorelated

Thursday, January 20, 2011

stripey rainbow quilt

I've squared up my stripey blocks to 13.25" and I've assembled all the blocks I've got left from the first two sets of 2.5" precut strips. I think I like it, but I've only got 15 blocks, and I think I want 30 (for a 5x6 layout). I'm in the mood for large, colorful quilts to curl up under during these dark, dreary winter days.
~Phosphorelated

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

quilt top complete!

My Color Blocks quilt top is done! It sat around for a bit after I got the sashing between all the blocks done because I wanted it to be bigger. So I added an 11" border on each side, in the same grey (Kona cotton in coal, I believe), and it's now 60" square. I couldn't have planned it better; I bought the Kona cotton on sale at JoAnn's, and got a very odd amount (2 5/8 yard or something uneven like that) because I bought whatever was left on the bolt. There are only a few scraps of the grey left; a couple 2.5"x5" and a few even smaller than that. Talk about meant to be!
~Phosphorelated

Saturday, January 15, 2011

stripey quilt

I've been playing with those bold-colored 2.5" strips some more. I keep thinking about my earlier ideas about a woven-looking quilt made of stripes going in opposite directions. It's very simple, but I think I like it.Cheerful, no?
~Phosphorelated

Monday, January 3, 2011

color blocks

What I'm working on...

Cheers,
~Phosphorelated

Sunday, January 2, 2011

color blocks

During Connecting Threads' black Friday sale, I bought a bunch of half-priced precut fabric bundles, including a set each of warm and cool colored fat quarters. I didn't have any plans, I just wanted to play with some solids and see what happened. I also bought some charm squares (5" precut squares), and one day I looked at the charm squares on my pressing mat and thought they might look nice just like that, 5" squares with 1.5" sashing in between. Then in the middle of the night I wondered what would happen if I took all the warm colors and made a quilt out of them, and one out of cool colors. But I couldn't decide if I wanted to use white, grey or black between the squares. Then I wondered what would happen if I made one of each -- the same warm squares repeated three times, once with a white background, once with grey, and once with black. Colors look so different against those three colors, and I thought it would be neat to watch how they changed depending on the background.
But when I laid out the warm colors to do this, they looked a bit lonely, so I added the cool colors:
And they looked happy. By then I just wanted to sew, and three sets seemed pretty ambitious, so I went with grey, a color I haven't used much. Always good to try something new, right?

All pinned and ready to play!



What's inspiring you today?
~Phosphorelated