Dreaming little dreams

The last 6 months felt like one big project after another. But at the beginning of April I turned in my next book, and for the past month I've been in creativity mode (where all good ideas are born). Creativity mode is a lot of playing with fabric, or sketching like crazy, thinking new thoughts and trying new things...

Here is some improvisationally cut foundation that's then improvisationally pieced and joined back together. I want to do this x1000. Big and over the top scrappy. This is my "fabric sketch". Right now I'm appliquéing the edges down but I bet with some practice I could do this all on the machine.

Spring is making the world bright and lovely. I've been thinking about fabric design and how I love shapes and color and so I made an entry into a recent Spoonflower challenge. It's gotten a lot of love over at Spoonflower which felt really good! I have plenty of sketches of other design ideas, it's just a matter of time at the computer to get the repeats and colors right.

Getting everything to fit just right is an interesting (sometimes frustrating and slow!) challenge. But I've enjoyed learning more. And it turns out the same skills are applicable elsewhere too: I was invited to turn some of my quilting designs into pantograph patterns! These are quilting designs that can be followed by long arm quilters manually or used digitally to finish quilts. I've made 5 so far, and hope to be able to show one on an actual quilt soon! (I don't own a long arm! Minor inconvenience...) If you have a long arm though, the designs are available through Willow Leaf Studio and I'd love to see what you quilt with them!

It's fun to see how much there is to show for the last couple of months from playing around and following my curiosity. I'm looking forward to exploring and experimenting a bit more before I dive into my next big project, whatever that ends up being! Are you trying new things right now too? Spring seems to be full of that kind of energy!

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Star Lattice

For the record: I'm still in love with wedges. I'm having a geometry moment in my life right now I think. 

This quilt is made with a 10 degree ruler! It's pretty simple construction: just a Magic Triangle block with the triangle point and the outer wedges the same color. You can really do so much with that block!  This pattern is called Star Lattice. It's all written and it should be available after this week. More details here when I have them! 

I'd really like to do this quilt again all scrappy. That's a funny thing about writing patterns. I like improvising and using scraps, but the less systematic I am in my construction, the harder it is to write a pattern for another quilter to follow. I'd like to get better at including scrappy construction in my patterns. My nod to improvisation in this pattern is that I substituted 1/4 yard of the yellow solid for a nearly the same yellow print. I didn't even put that in the pattern instructions but you can see it in the close up. 

I quilted this quilt with the grid quilting technique I so love right now (GEOMETRY!!). I teach all about it in my Craftsy class, Quilting the Grid.  Oh, and do you see the facing on the back? I really didn't like any of the bindings I auditioned for the quilt and I just needed it done, so I jumped at a facing instead. I like the crisp edges and I also like that it was made with the extra backing fabric I trimmed away after quilting. I might do more of that in the future because it's so straightforward and resourceful. 

You can see the quilting better from the back, naturally. The play between the navy and the aqua is my favorite part of this quilt. It looks kind of sparkly. I feel like navy is making itself present in my color sense a lot these days. Am I the only one or is this a color trend thing? Happy stitching!

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