Quilt Along-Week 1

Did you check out the Fancy Flowers Quilt Along?  I finally got around to making my fabric choices yesterday.  

The challenge for this project was to try to limit myself to fabric form my stash.  It was a bit more challenging than usual to pick out options with the help of our new kitty, Bailey and two still very curious German Shepherds who want to be everywhere that the kitten is. Bailey was in this shot just a moment before I snapped the photo.  It was hist first time in the quilt studio and it brought out the wild kitty in him so I finally just gave up with the photo op idea.

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I wanted to identify the fabric for the basket first and then pull my other fabrics from that.  These two were the early contenders.  I love the colorful pansy print, have had it for several years now, I need to find the perfect quilt for it, but ruled it out here because of the light background.  The blue is really a beauty, and I could see doing the flowers in yellow and having a wonderful spring quilt.  With the scale of the print I set it aside as well, mainly because I was not in the mood for spring.

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I went with a simpler print that had a dark background.  The black and rose colors I decided were the mood I wanted to create.  I broke from the pattern color inspiration by going with yellow for my flower centers.  With all the greens I had in my stash they turned out to be the hardest to find.  I had bright greens, too bright for this quilt, and very dark greens, blue greens.  Thank goodness I keep all of my little leftovers.  I found a nice variety for the leaves that looked good with the greens in my main fabric.  Just one problem.  Those green setting triangles.  I could not find a green with enough fabric that blended well with these choices.  Back to the drawing board, err, the fabric stash.

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This time I started with a green I liked for the setting triangles and found the fabrics for the stem and leaves.  These greens had a little more yellow in them than I originally wanted, but I like the way they gave a little more life to the color palette, and the fabric for the setting triangles even has a green litte vine that matches the greens in the basket fabric pretty closely.    The thing about working strictly from the stash on hand is that you sometimes make fabric combinations that would not necessarily be the ones you chose at the quilt shop- and it also causes me to stretch beyond the limits of the pattern I am working with and play with making my own choices, gaining confidence along the way.  

So now it is off to watch Week Two's video lesson.  Hopefully I will have some beautiful leaves to show you next week.

Taking it a stitch at a time,
Deb

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