Tuesday, September 23, 2014

New Project, New Palette, New Scale, New Blocks

Like so many of us, I suffer from a bit of project ADD.
The blocks I've been posting so far are all for a quilt I'm calling "Experiment Year 2014" (more on that quilt later), but I've pretty much completed all the fun parts (designing and piecing the blocks), and now it's a matter of putting it all together so...
naturally I just had to go ahead and start a whole new quilt. :)

Picking out the palette is definitely one of my favorite parts.
I'd been mulling over this idea for some time, so it was really great to finally pull out my stash and put it together.

Basically, the idea I wanted to play with is to take two distinctly different palettes and jam them together into one quilt.

So for the first palette, I wanted to go with something soft, and reserved...

1st Palette: Emphasis Lavender
I dug out all my lavenders, greys and a handful of select creams.
I'm really hoping to emphasize the lavender, but I don't have too many in my stash, and I'm feeling very picky on the hue: on the grey/blue side rather than the pink/plum side.

For my second palette, what I wanted to do was something inspired by the some of the brighter fabrics from Ghana, but then I was also spending a lot of time looking at Guatemalan fabrics...
I'm slightly disappointed that what I came up with looks more like the Skittles palette ... but that's a bit harsh, and actually I really like it.

2nd Palette: Brights
There's bright reds, burgundies, tangerines, pumpkins, marigolds, limes, kelly greens, dark royal blues, and then I couldn't help but throw in some chartreuse to muck it up a little.

And then I JAMMED them together!

Palette for my new project: jamming together disparate palettes
Another new development: up until now I've been making blocks with sides finishing at 3", but I've decided that one third of the blocks in this quilt will be larger, with sides finishing at 3.75"

So far I've made 4 blocks in this new palette, 3 are in the new size. Bigger = more room for more detail.

Four new blocks!

All sliced up! I kept this design simple, because I want to frame this angel

She's reading '100 Years of Solitude' out loud to a murmuration of starlings as they rest on a telephone wire

I've been calling this block Spinning Bricks

Spinning Bricks with ravens

All sliced up! I've been calling this one Birds Nest

Birds Nest

Swamp Angel, Hexagon Variation (Yep, that's you Melody Miller! Love these Mustangs!)
That's all for now!
Thanks for reading!

All the best,
Reyna