Right now, I’m making a quilt for my friends’ son. Like many crackpot projects, I bought the fabric without a pattern in mind, and by the time I got partway through sewing pieces together, I found that the plan needed some editing. The fabric I’d intended to use for the inner border just wouldn’t work.
On to Plan B – get some solid brown fabric. Of course, the brown I need is not regular brown, it’s Weird Reddish Brown. I visited three fabric stores, and found plenty of brown, but none of the weird reddish variety.
But I’m a Crackpot Quilter. I can handle mid-project redirection. The next weekend I went back to a fabric store looking for dark olive green. No luck. Maybe blueish? Nope.
By then I was running out of plans (having rejected A, B, C, and D), and was thinking about sending a plea for fabric assistance out to my fellow Crackpots. There was only one place left to look: my stash. Like all the Crackpots, I have a fabric stash. the size of which I’m unwilling to reveal. Most of it is intended for future projects that are currently in the “conceptual” phase of creation. (And many of those projects have been in the conceptual phase for many years, but let’s not talk about that).
Down in the third drawer I found some solid fat quarters I’d purchased at the quilt show in Chicago a few years ago. I was going to make a wall hanging my living room. Lo and behold, the brown fat quarter was Weird Reddish Brown (which wouldn’t match my couch anyway). Project saved!
Now I just need to decide where to cut the outer border fabric – the stripes are a bit wavy, and I always find dealing with the “artistic” stripes when trying to make a straight border that looks good a challenge.
Here’s what I have so far (click to biggify):
This is very cool. I’m interested in your design process… I can’t figure out what the blocks were.
M
There aren’t really any blocks. I am aiming for a 36″ square finished quilt (based on the width of the flannel I have for backing, post-shrinkage). I calculated 6″ for the border on each side, leaving a 24″ square in the middle. There are two fabrics which would work best in larger pieces (the turtles and lilies), and the rest would be ok in smaller pieces. I like easy numbers, so I did 3″ and 6″ squares. I arranged the 6″ squares (four of each fabric) in a pleasing manner on the 8×8 grid, and filled in with 3″ squares of the four other fabrics.
Very cool, Rebecca. And I like the moral to your story: When all else fails, consult your stash. Or better yet, Try your stash first.
You had me fooled on the pattern. I thought you had one. (-: What you came up with is both very simple and varied enough to be interesting.I’ll have to try it sometime.
And I really like the border fabric, even if the stripes are a bit wonky. Be sure to let us see the final result.
I agree with Ann – the lack-of-pattern works really well here. Whenever I try something like this it always ends up looking unbalanced in some way, but this looks great!