January flowers…

Thanks for all your lovely comments on my last post! I had fun looking back at the things I made in 2011, but now I’ve already started looking ahead and working on some new projects for 2012. For my first quilt of 2012, I decided to go with January flowers – specifically these awesome retro vintagey florals which are part of Melody Miller’s latest line, Ruby Star Shining.


I started by pairing them with a few other solids and prints from my stash – some Art Gallery solids, a bit of Essex linen, and even a little voile. Sometimes I start out knowing what type of pattern I want to use, and other times I start by just pulling out fabrics and then deciding on a pattern. I went with the latter this time, so after deciding on my fabrics, I browsed though my quilting Pinterest board.

Once I saw this quilt by Denyse Schmidt on my pinboard, I knew these fabrics would be perfect. I usually like to switch up a design a bit, but I love this one just as it is, so I went with it. I’m not sure how Denyse put her quilt together, but I decided to go with foundation piecing for mine – it’s certainly not necessary, but I just find it easier to know what area I need to cover when I can use the paper as a guide. I used the floral Melody Miller print for the center of each block, then a couple of the lighter prints, ending with the darker purples.

Unfortunately, as much as I loved the quilt top when it was finished, I’m not totally happy with how the quilting came out – I went with wavy, intersecting horizontal lines, which I like. I just had some trouble finding a thread color that would work on both the very dark purples as well as the lighter cream colors. [This has always been a dilemma for me – I’m not much for light thread on dark fabrics, or for dark thread on light fabrics – so what to do when you’re using both light and dark?!] Anyway, I did have to rip out quite a bit of stitching, then settled (though not totally happily) on this variegated thread for the purple sections, with cream thread for the lighter floral sections. It’s ok, but still not my favorite!

But maybe I can overlook that when there’s a cute baby hiding underneath!

 

This entry was posted in [search] String Quilts, [search] Strip Quilts, [search] Wonky/Improv Quilts, Posts about Quilts, Quilts and tagged , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

61 Responses to January flowers…

  1. Pingback: FITF: love letters | Film in the Fridge

Leave a Reply to Anna Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *