Quilt in Progress

One of the patterns in my book uses the idea of four simple blocks that can be mixed and matched to make different designs. All the blocks are the same size so you can play around and choose any combo of them to make a quilt. The larger drawing above is what I used for the quilts in my book, but the smaller drawing on the right is another option I drew up and knew that I’d want to make soon.

So pattern chosen, I looked around for color inspiration and my eye landed on this charm pack of Flowerland by Melody Miller that I had just purchased. Some of the colors are brighter than what I’d usually work with, but a few of the prints are quite lovely, like the flower seed packets and the butterflies.

So here’s how I use a charm pack of a collection to inspire a whole quilt with fabrics from my stash. I pulled out this butterfly piece because it had a little bit of all the colours. Then I just started picking fabrics from my stash that seemed to work with it. I tried to lean slightly less bright and saturated, and actually my stash didn’t have a lot of the super bright colors anyway. I added more black, because I had in mind that the big quarter square triangle pieces would be in black, navy, and dark brown. (the default by looking at this fabric line would be to stick with black and navy, but I wanted it to read a bit warmer and softer, so that’s why I added in some brown hues.)

And here I’ve made enough blocks to get an idea how it’s going to look. Please excuse the sad night time photo. It doesn’t show the colors as lovely as they really are. But I wanted to show you some mockups of a few different ways to arrange these three types of blocks. I uploaded this photo into my computer program and then came up with three different layouts to show you.

Here’s my original, that (I think) I’m planning to make. Already upon observing this, I’ve decided that the rest of the nine patches need to move in the lighter direction. I want the large star shape to stand out more, rather than just light and dark diamonds. To accomplish this, the nine patches need to be lighter. That doesn’t mean that I get rid of the ones I have. The ones I already have will be fine, I just need to head in that direction.

Here’s my next mockup. More of a medallion style quilt with all the Star Hollow blocks in the center, the Quarter Square Triangles making a lovely border and then the nine patches making an unobtrusive by scrappy outer border. Honestly, I’m really tempted by this layout. I just love it and I think it suits this color scheme quite well.

I should add that each of these layouts would probably use a different number of each blocks. For example this one would use more Nine Patch blocks and less Quarter Square Triangles. My book give instructions for each block, and also gives instructions for the whole quilt that is in the book. These alternate designs you would need to take the instructions for each block and figure out how many of each block you would need.

Here’s the last of the three mockup examples. I love this one too! And within these three examples you could change the look even more by changing around the values. You could make the darks and lights be opposite. Or the Quarter Square Triangles could have less contrast, which would make the diamond shapes less prominent.

Ah, once again so many ideas and too little time!