Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Warm Wishes


One of my big, self-imposed, challenges this year is that I am trying to use up the fabric I have in my stash. I am trying not to buy new material (well, except for my daughter’s Bat Mitzvah quilt), and I’m pretty successful so far. I’m enjoying going to my shelves of fabric and seeing what I have, and how it might go with other fabrics I already have.

An added challenge is trying to do patterns that are not “scrappy”. That is, I would like to use my fabrics in ways that do not involve bits and pieces of a lot of different fabrics, but ones that use up 3-5 fabrics in a more consistent way.
 
Enter Warm Wishes.

This is a pattern that is new to me, but is so versatile I thought I’d try it. It alternates squares of a single fabric and squares that are made up of strips of 3 different fabrics. I looked on my shelves, and finally found a fabric I wanted for the squares. I’d gotten this fabric a long time ago and have been waiting for the right project. It is a warm red color with gold patterns overlaid on the red.
The next step was trying to decide what might go with it. The process was complicated by the fact that I had to find fabrics of which I had enough material (without going “scrappy”). I ended up with a color combination I NEVER would have thought to buy, but which I think works pretty well.
This one:

And the entire piece:

One I'd finished the pieced top, the quilt made its recipient known to me. A friend had just moved to her own place and this would be a house-warming gift for her. So I added the border to make it big enough for a couch quilt, keeping the warm tones going.

The back, I thought, needed something else. So I went back to my shelves and picked out some more fabrics. The back is pieced, though with only a few pieces, and has a very different feel from the front:

Two close ups of the backing fabrics:

 
The outside border on this side is cherries, which brings us back to warm tones and ties the front and back together to add cohesion to the piece.
I gave it to my friend last week and she pointed out that this gift is literally a “warming” gift. I like that.
She likes the quilt.
Yay!

No comments:

Post a Comment