Note: Some of you may have seen this post
over the weekend on the AHIQ Group Blog
or on Sujata's Basket of Scraps blog -
but I'm sharing it here as well
so it becomes part of my own blog record.
This is the quilt from Unconventional and Unexpected
that Sujata suggested for the U and U quilt along.
I knew from the beginning that I would not
be making mine in the style of the original,
so I've been waiting to see which direction
my version would take.
In the meantime, I ran across this vintage beauty
photographed by Ann Champion and shared on Flickr.
And my brain immediately leaped to a quilt design
I've made twice before.
This version named Happy Happy Joy Joy,
or HHJJ for short, was made
during the 2016 Rainbow Scrap Challenge.
And this version, named Girly Girl,
was made shortly thereafter
to celebrate our great niece's birth.
In HHJJ, I used strings to fill in the side triangles.
In Girly Girl, I used half square triangles.
So with the design method settled,
I moved on to my waiting fabric pulls.
I had pulled these scrappy pieces
shortly after Bonnie Hunter introduced
her 2018 Good Fortune mystery quilt.
I never planned to make her mystery quilt
but I was drawn to the colors and her inspiration.
| Double click to see greater detail |
This photo was taken by our DIL in the Forbidden City
during one of her Asian business trips.
It captures Bonnie's inspirational color palette perfectly.
(I even used this photo as my desktop wallpaper
back when I was working at the law firm)
I also had this fabric pull set aside
for the current AHIQ Red challenge.
Once I started looking, the overlap between the two
was obvious and they quickly became one project
that suits both the UandU QAL
and the AHIQ Red challenge.
With the intensity of my colors,
it was clear the low volume prints
needed an upgrade.
This long-stashed Marblehead was my choice.
I pulled these four fabrics from the stash
to use for the quilt's pieced back.
Initially I was not going to add the narrow strips
along the sides of the center insert.
But when I cut one WOF strip of a well-aged red batik
and laid it alongside the first pieced center segment
you can see the results -- Those rich red 1" strips
simply HAD to be part of this quilt.
I'm planning a layout 5 blocks wide x 7 blocks long
for a top that will measure 50" x 70"
8 blocks made, 27 more to go.
And when I trim the center strips to 4.5" wide,
these marvelous lengths are the cutaways.
I already have a plan to use them
in another small quilt!
Hooray for the UandUQAL
and the AHIQ Red challenge
and for shopping my stash to create this project.
Quiltdivajulie
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"You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you'll discover will be wonderful. What you'll discover is yourself."
Alan Alda