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Fabric of My Life: Colors of October quilt - autumn inspirations and few questions for you all...
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I hope you are enjoying some beautiful days of autumn where you are. Here in western NY, it is really a spectacular, colorful and oh so inspiring time of the year. Even this year, when leaf colors might not be as spectacular as they can (long summer drought), so many moments take me breath away and make me pull out my phone camera quick...
This vista is actually just few steps away from the back of the building I work in, so I took a short stroll during lunch break. I could sit and watch this for hours!
maples are the ones to usually give you these spectacular colors. But what always gets me is their juxtaposition against this bright, blue sky!!
And as reds, fire orange and deep golds are the usual colors that draw the attention, I am always amazed with this yellow, chartreuse and bright greens too - specially again, against that blue sky...
I really, really want to make a quilt in just these colors!
Just look at these!
Oh and the dance of light...
Well I did make one quilt, long time ago, directly inspired by amazing colors of fall - I call it Colors of October.
I love this quilt.
It was designed specifically for the class - a class my beginner students wanted. After completing the Beginner Quilting, they all asked me to teach them some more! The best compliment teacher can get!! So I designed this quilt to teach some alternative, fun and easy techniques for making Flying Geese, Bow Tie and Square-in-Square blocks, as well as free-hand, gentle curved piecing for the border. They loved the class and many students still love it! (currently teaching it in local quilt shop) - and that just makes me so happy.
Here it is in full view (but not not the best photo - it's an old one. Quilt is currently in the quilt shop, so I can't take a new photo just yet)
I also use this quilt as an example of certain type of thread choices for quilting, I use it to show how you can pick a palette of fabric colors starting from the initial inspirational print (fall foliage print in the border and center of this one) and even how you can dress-up your binding with some accent color piping (thin purple one here).
So I decided to make a new version! In different, yet still fall-inspired colors and on a light background this time. And few other little surprises too.
So here is my selection - what do you think??
This time I did NOT go from the inspirational print and pulled the colors - I actually went the opposite way! I saw this line-up of Cotton & Steel colors, decided on the off-white one for a background and only then I went around the store in search of a potential print that will work for all of them!! It was a bit more challenging than the other way around, I have to say! How do you do this usually?
And here is another question for you: I am thinking this would be a great set of tutorials on the blog...do you agree? Would you like to see a series of tutorials on following:
-easy ways to make HSTs
-Bear paw block (middle block in this quilt)
- easy (from squares only!) 3D Bow Tie blocks (and bonus 3D Square-in-Square block too)
- several ways to make Flying geese block
- curve-pieced borders
- and few other bonus things too... :)
You could choose to make this exact quilt or just practice each technique as we go. We can even make it as a sew-a-long, with prizes and fun? We can do it weekly, bi-weekly or monthly?
Let me know what you think!!
Wishing you inspirational joys of autumn,
love,
Marija
