Pick a Color - My Plan

I have spent far too much time pondering 

how to approach this challenge.

I love the idea - it's how I work a lot of the time.

But I haven't been able to settle on a particular project,

so I've come up with a different plan.

The gestation period, which includes a source

of inspiration to inform my color palette, 

the actual fabric pull from my stash, 

and choosing a design that suits the situation,

is a favorite aspect of the quilt making process.

So I'm going to indulge my love of planning.

Which leads us to Color Palette No. 1 

In addition to the glorious blooms of this year's amaryllis,

I watched Wanda make a series of three pink quilts in 2021.

(two are in this post and the third is here)

Her inspiration plus these beautiful flowers led me

to think about making a pink quilt from my stash.

Starting with the idea of a sixteen-patch design

I pulled twelve pairs of darker/lighter pinks.

Hmmm . . . 

My thinking about design morphed several (!) times

and ended up here - with the Rail Fence design from

Sujata Shah's Cultural Fusion Quilts book.

Another view of the stunning flowers.

I chose this stripe from the stash for binding

as an homage to the veining in the petals

and the black with pink flowers for backing.

But in the end I decided 

not to make these fabrics into a quilt.

It all felt like I was being too literal.

And working through the process turned out

to be enough to satisfy me for now.

* * *

I will share Color Palette No. 2 in February.

If all goes well, I'll have six palettes 

to share during our six month challenge period.

And who knows . . . 

one of them might actually turn into a quilt.

Quiltdivajulie

AHIQ Challenge, Color Palette Challenge Inspiration!

Adding to the Four Patch blocks I've hand and machine pieced.

Calendar color of the month page I saved from my last year calendar.

 

Hello Quilt Friends from the foothills of the Sierra Nevada!

Sunny weather and cool here.

 

Kaja posted a new AHIQ Challenge and it's choose a Color Palette.

Which is fine by me and easy since I knew right away what I'd choose because the colors have been in the back of my mind since summer. 

I began by finding photos that I keep coming back to and projects and fabrics that are influencing me right now. And the page I saved from my last years color calendar says it all,

Orange, yellow and blue.

So with that decision the challenge is on. I'm not in any hurry, however, we are still in the process of moving/settling in. I have limited space right now for projects, but I have a lot of time for planning/dreaming, which is the best part.

In a day or two I'll post more info and inspiration on my blog, do stop by to visit.

And we do have a lot to be thankful for, don't we?

Color Palette Challenge - So Many Options

 

The newest AHIQ challenge involves 

choosing a color palette.

I looked back through my previous quilts

and some of my pending projects since

I love working from an inspiration image/idea.

The fabric pull above was inspired by 

this much-loved photo of my grandson.

This is a fabric pull for a possible project

that I have named Sapphire.

It was inspired by this photo of Little Man.

This free pieced barn quilt

hangs in our foyer.

(one of the quilts made when I

was doing trunk shows for my book)

It was inspired by this photo

taken as I drove home from St. Louis.

I tore this ad out of a magazine

because the combination of textures

and colors caught my eye.

This was the first of three quilts

inspired by that image.

These are the other two that now

 live with my sister and her husband.

(clearly I cut way too many HSTs)

The palette for Dumpster Diving 10 - Do Tell . . .

. . . was inspired by this idea.

This is Namaste - made for our younger son's 40th birthday.

It was inspired by this photo from a street festival.

I made Happy Strings during a 

PINK and ORANGE challenge with my friend Lynne.

This glorious iris from a gardening catalog

had a strong influence on my color palette.

This is The Kitchen Door quilt.

When I was painting our front doors red,

I shared this photo on Instagram (not there any longer)

and a friend commented that it should be a quilt.

I agreed with her.

* * *

With all of that said/shown,

I'm still pondering how I want to approach

this new challenge . . .

All in good time.

Quiltdivajulie

New year, new challenge

 That's right: it's 2022 and it's time for our next challenge. 

I've been around the houses a bit on this one.  Had an idea, discarded it.  Had another idea - it was okay, but wasn't really something I wanted to try, which didn't feel quite in the spirit of things.  I have considered both block-based challenges and one or two that, like the symmetry/asymmetry one, might push us to think about our approaches in a more general way.  Nothing has quite floated my boat and it it's not doing it for me, that's not the greatest of starts, is it?

But to get to the point, after all that beating around the quilty bush, I am setting a challenge I am calling 'pick a colour'.  I have a pinterest board where I save things just because they have colour combinations I love.  It has everything from buildings to landscapes to spools of thread.  

I save them but then they just sit there and I'm guessing I'm not the only person who does that.  I even have, saved in a notebook, written descriptions of colour palettes, from other peoples quilts, from nature (and yes, my family do laugh at me when I sit there trying to recall all the colours I saw at the bottom of a rockpool).  

So I am asking you to pick a colour palette, no limits or restrictions on how many, or how few shades it includes.  Maybe you could try a colour you wouldn't normally think of, or throw an oddball into the mix.  Maybe you think that's a hideous option and you want to use 57 shades of blue.  Whatever you want is okay, but if possible, share an inspiration picture or description, so we can have the fun of seeing where it leads you.  

Happy New Year

 My first finish of 2022!!  xoxo

Looking For Asymmetry in the Final results

 Here's my two attempts at working with the latest AHIQ prompt, symmetry/asymmetry. Or better yet, what I ended up with after winding through the process journey and hoping something would come up looking asymmetrical. While symmetry comes a lot more naturally to me, asymmetry does not fill me with terror or otherwise stop me in my tracks. I went with asymmetry mostly because it is the one that I'm least likely to attempt at first pass.

Ode to Joy

What I did figure out while tentatively {very open-endedly} pursuing this challenge, is that I do NOT like to start out with the idea that my quilt has to be either/or. It's like a huge, red caution light that I just didn't have the strength of will to shove aside at this particular moment in time. I kind of felt like making that line in the sand before the quilt was started would just shut off all the creative flow for that particular project and that was that.

A new, scrappy baby quilt

Hmm... Me-thinks this is a prompt that deserves further exploration in the future. For the most part, I can now see that I generally end up with symmetry, or as something Julie so wonderfully described as gently off-balance symmetry. Rarely unmistakably, true asymmetry. It's something to think about! You can read much more about the adventure of these two quilts over at my blog, Quilty Folk.

Block in the Box in Purple

 My fabric, friends sewing, shot cotton/batiks and love.

A friend quilted it simply as a gift .

It has my very favorite yellow fabric in it.

Love