Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Foothills Mystery Quilt - July - My Fabric Selections

I am hosting a mystery quilt-a-long through my local guild (Foothills Piecemakers Quilt Guild) and online here.  All of the posts and instructions for this mystery quilt can be found on the tab above and the introductory post can be found here.

For July, the instructions gave out some general information about the quilt-a-long and fabric requirements. The quilt will use 3 sets of fabrics:

Fabric Set A - fabrics forming the main pattern of the quilt
Fabric Set B - fabrics forming the background of the quilt
Fabric Set C - fabrics forming a highlight portion of the quilt

When I designed the quilt, after playing around with different fabric combinations, I decided that I would use a combination of pink and green solids and prints as Set A, white solid fabric as Set B, and dark gray charcoal fabric as Set C.




Over the past few weeks as I looked at the stack I have started to get a little bored with my choices.  I almost always use white as the background in my quilts (I admit that I get twitchy when I have less than 10 yards on hand) and while that fabrics I selected would look nice and would work well for the quilt, I was not really pushing myself outside of my comfort zone...so I decided to scrap that color scheme and start anew.

I have been ogling quilts with low volume backgrounds and collecting low volume fabrics for a while now but have never had the courage to use them in a quilt, mixing all of those patterns is not comfortable for me.  So the new plan is to use a bunch of bright colored fabrics for Set A, low volume fabrics for Set B, and black solid fabric for Set C (many thanks to my IG friends who helped me select the various fabrics).



I figure that it is only fabric and with each quilt I learn and stretch myself as a quilter.  This is just the first month so there is plenty of time to join in :)

I'm linking up to  Sew Cute Tuesday @ Blossom Heart QuiltsFabric Tuesday @ Quilt StoryLet's Bee Social @ Sew Fresh QuiltsNeedle and Thread Thursday @ My Quilt Infatuation, and WIP Wednesday @ Freshly Pieced.




8 comments:

  1. Hooray for courage! Onward! Looking forward to seeing progress.

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  2. Oooh, lovely! I'm glad you are trying something new with us too, since you get to know what the quilt will look like. Fun for us all! :)

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  3. I'm super-excited about your new fabric choices! Can't wait to see what you do with it! I've been wanting to try some low-volume sewing and this will be perfect. Also, would we be able to make this quilt wider if necessary?

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  4. Thank you for conducting the QAL for us in blog land as well as your guild. There are many for whatever reasons do not get out and participate in local guild events. This is a great way to include others. Thanks. Congrats on stretching yourself in your fabric choices. I understand getting nervous when you don't have white, white, white in your stash.

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  5. Wow! Those fabrics are ALL so pretty.... But I have to agree.... That second set of fabrics with all those yummy low volumes is going to rock this quilt! Way to push yourself, Cheryl. I just know you will be so happy with your choices!

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  6. Such pretty fabrics. I applaud your creating a challenge for yourself and pushing your boundaries.

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  7. I've often used white as my background too, but most recently I've tried low volume. What I've learned on a practice block is that I have to be really careful what I pick as low volume otherwise everything looks medium tones and nothing stands out. Your fabrics look like they will contrast really well.

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  8. your fabrics look nice together.l I am the same way-looking to do a grey background, but when shopping the greys look so dark I end up going to white or snow for the background. I have seen beautiful quilts with a black background, maybe I will do that this time. I need to get out of my comfort zone too...now to dig out some fabrics from my stash!

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