I've been busy, just not blogging. I've been thinking about it frequently, thoughts like "ooh, I should blog about that!", yet it's been over a month since I shared anything here. I have things to share, I just get sidetracked on my way to the computer.
Here's one of the distractions, but also one of the things I meant to blog about.
 |
| Halloween Expressions from Riley Blake Designs |
Pretty, right? It's a bright happy bundle. It followed me home from the quilt shop a few days after I had an insomniac designing session.
I received a call for quilt design submissions, with a particular request for precut-friendly patterns, including FQ-friendly ones. When a thought struck me at 3:00 am as I failed to fall asleep, I got up, started up EQ8, and played. I finally got drowsy, so I went back to bed and fully expected to discard the design when I woke up.
Huh. I didn't hate it in the morning. In fact I was really excited and energized about it and needed to test it ASAP. My stash is mostly leftovers from previous projects, and as such doesn't include a lot of FQ sized pieces. So sad I had to head to the quilt shop! The Riley Blake bundle jumped right into my hands.
 |
| Fabric cut, ready to sew |
Cutting went swiftly, sewing almost as swiftly. I meant to take progress photos, but I was in the sewing zone and suddenly there were 20 blocks on the wall and no photos. I made up for the lack of progress photos with a plethora of block shuffling photos.
I hated the first layout and feared the whole project was a dud.
Over the course of the next week I shuffled blocks around, took photos, let things sit and simmer, shuffled some more. The darkest fabrics and the one multicolor print gave me trouble. Thank goodness for my phone camera to help me keep track of what I'd already tried!
 |
| Screenshot of my photo gallery |
That's just some of the layouts I tried. There are over 30 on my phone. Here's what I settled on finally.
I still wasn't 100% sold, but I also wasn't willing to give up on these blocks so I decided to start sewing them together and hope for the best.
Sewing the blocks together and pressing tidied things up quite nicely and it started to grow on me.
Adding the border pulled it all together and now I'm giddy again. It's brighter than most of my recent quilts, but I used to use bright colours all the time. I'm not sure when I drifted away from them, but it's been fun to revisit them.
I bought more of the multicolour print for the backing.
The backing is pieced, and I have a quilting plan. There will be circles and straight lines. I'll work out some details as I stitch. I hope this yellow thread I had on hand will work. It's a bit brighter than I usually use, but it's a bright quilt so I'll go with it.
I'm excited to start quilting this tonight. I want it ready to show off when I release the pattern next week!
Happy quilting,
Joanne
