Throwback Thursday

Hi everyone,

Do you like this social media trend called Throwback Thursday? I really like seeing people's memories, old photos, dogs when they were pups... Somehow I always miss to do it myself, but hey - today is the day!!

This being a quilty blog for the most part, while searching for some photos I stumbled upon this folder called "Woven Whispers"...

Well - Throwback Thursday here I come!
I really love this design and remember having lots of fun playing with colors and applique and yet... somehow I forgot all about it??
  This was my first chance to design patterns for a brand new line of fabrics! A well known fabric designer, Ro Gregg asked me to do it after seeing some of my designs through the QuiltWoman.com where I have few patterns published. I was so excited!!
Fabric line was Marblehead - just gorgeous colors in a marble texture. I played with many different designs with this fabric collection, but this one was picked as kinda "new and unusual" - and yet, can you see what it is, what it is based on?
Yup - just a good old Rail Fence block!
In this case, I just arranged it in a 9-patch grid, with a plain (or print) square in the middle:

or with plain (background) square:

You can do just few colors, put blocks on-point and get this:

Or go to town with colors, like here:

Or do a color gradation that really illuminates the quilt:

Once you go to use many colors, like above, it would be difficult to sew Rail Fence blocks into that 9-patch larger block that is shown above ahead of time and keep the color placement correct.  In that case I keep my RF blocks separate, place them all the way I want them on the design wall and THEN maybe take them as 9-patch units to sew.

Oh I even played with incorporating a photo into this design by replacing few of the bigger 9-patch blocks with a photo (so this would be a square with photo transferred on fabric):

With photos of my beloved Golden Chain tree in full bloom..

Or with some of many gorgeous Clematis flowers...

Isn't this fun? I really want to do this for real one of these days... :)
There is NEVER enough time to make all the quilts we can dream-up, right? 

So when this new collection called Marblehead was coming and I was fortunate to be asked to make something to showcase it - I got to actually MAKE one of these designs!
Here is my design in EQ, colored with Marblehead:

And then it came to life... :)

Ready to be quilted:

And then some quilting fun: (all quilted with three different colors of 50wt #Aurifil - and if I remember correctly, this was one of the first times I quilted with Aurifil! Yeah - fell in love real fast.)

By the way, this was all raw-edge, fusible applique and most often, I don't stitch around applique shapes but rather secure them down (and give them texture!) with just quilting over them.
Do you do the same?

LOVE the sunrise light on this!! :)

So this is a large wall hanging size (or actually you could just throw it over the sofa, like this? ), but the beauty of this pattern is that it is so MODULAR! Make larger blocks and it becomes lap size or even bed size quilt!! Choose to do applique or NOT! In my pattern I included those versions too.

Speaking of the pattern - yes you can get it, right HERE on Quiltwoman.com web site. (OK, shameless self-promotion is over now!)

And as long as we are going down memory lane - I looked and realized that I blogged about this design just a little bit way back in 2012, and that post has actual colors (with ID numbers!) of all the Marblehead fabrics I used in this quilt, together with a dark color variation - you can find it HERE

So how's that for a #tbt Throwback Thursday?
Maybe I forgot about this one because the quilt itself is not in my possession any more? But there are more future quilts that I want to make on this theme...

Do you have a quilt you made and kinda forgot about? 

I have to say that now I am inspired to look back some more and see what I was doodling (or planning in my EQ) and then forgot about... ? :)

Oh and not to leave out my buddy from this trip down memory lane - look at big boy Marley when he was just a pup!!

How cute was he!?! Kids, grand-kids or our furry kids - they all grow up way to fast, right?

Thank you so much for going down the memory lane with me today, have a wonderful weekend,

Marija