Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Bursting With Charm

I call this quilt "Bursting with Charm".  It was one of those projects that started out quite small and then just kept growing.












It began when I purchased a rotary cutting mat and wanted to try it out.  I started with the nearest pile of scraps, and started cutting out 2 1/2" squares.

Because I enjoyed the process,  I dove into my non-scrap fabrics and starting cutting  2 1/2" squares from them.  Before you know it, I had this stack, which I sorted by color:


As my collection grew, I separated the one big stack  into piles by color.

I tried to roughly arrange the colors by their neighbors on the color wheel,

 and then I started sewing them together into 4 patches.

I laid out the 4 patches on a design wall, and just kept playing around with them until I had an arrangement I liked.  I tried to put the lighter colors toward the center and the darker colors toward the edges to give the overall quilt a sort of focal point.
I used my camera to take lots of pictures of the 4 patches so that I could remember where I had positioned them, and then started sewing them together. 


In the end, I had a quilt top with a total of about 400 squares.  I decided to quilt it with a large circular swirl to accentuate the "bursting" effect.

What had started out as just an experiement with a new toy, ended up being a fun excercise in color play, and an interesting quilt was the result.  I entered it into my guild's annual show and got a first place Viewer's Choice ribbon. 


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5 comments:

  1. Nice quilt. Glad you won a prize for it, you deserved it.

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  2. Dear auntie Em,

    Thank you, thank you very much for your post!! I'm sorry for my late response; I'm afraid life got a bit in the way... Me, frantically cutting squares might have something to do with that, LOL. I'm really grateful that you explained it so well, and sooo extensively! THANK YOU!! Especially the pictures of how you laid them out according to the color wheel really is helpful! Right now, I'm busy making the squares, now I've got 220 out of 640. I've still got a loooong way to go, but it's really fun to do! I've added a picture of the squares I've got so far, plus a picture at 100 squares, when I tried to lie it out on the table. Tomorrow, we're gonna get a huge piece of wood, so I can pin them on it and see who it comes out!! Thanks again, you've really helped me get started!! I'll keep you updated ;)

    Love, Riek

    http://i201.photobucket.com/albums/aa129/Eressea86/IMG_1147.jpg
    http://i201.photobucket.com/albums/aa129/Eressea86/IMG_1135.jpg
    http://i201.photobucket.com/albums/aa129/Eressea86/IMG_1152.jpg

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  3. I, also, love Carol Doak and have inherited many scraps for just such a project as your color play quilt. Ah, the ideas are percolating.
    BTW, I keep my scraps sorted by color in huge glass cookie jars. A beautiful addiction.

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  4. I can't tell you, how much I love this quilt! I'm just a bloody beginner just in patchworking (no word about quilting yet), but exactly this colourful, modern style is my aim. Maybe some day I can do something similar... *hope*

    Greetings from Germany

    Sylvia

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