A Daydream Taking Shape

Yesterday was a play day. I stole away to my basement space, and played with fabric and color. I did a lot just laying one fabric on top of another, and standing back a few feet to look. You saw my color palette yesterday, and you know most of the fabric goes with all of the others. The majority of the time I would say, "Yeah, that works." But I would keep moving it around until I would say, "Wow! Now THAT one is fantastic!"
I think when you pick out a stack of fabric for any quilt you still have to do this-- unless you are making a block from a kit where someone else has already done this very same thing. 

I got hung up for a while on the notion I needed half-square triangles around the brown border. Then they turned into little blocks. This is what I was looking at, but I wasn't quite thrilled.I tried spacing them with yellow, and then pale blue down below. It was the color.

I had a new little ruler to lay across the diagonal to mark it, and I wanted to try it out. It was a lot more accurate at giving the correct spacing of sewing and cutting lines. It's a good buy.

I also learned that starting my strip with a scrap of fabric and then leading into my regular piecing was far superior then to just starting out on my good piecing. Feed it in one after the next, and you eliminate the fear you won't catch that tiny point enough that the feed dogs can move it back. We've all wound up with a knot of thread and chewed up fabric here while trying to get it started. Thank you, ladies, for the advice.

I used two 3" squares here. Right sides together. Mark the cutting line in the middle and sewing lines 1/4" to each side. Sew both sides with a 1.5mm seam length. (You will need to do 2 sets of these so you wind up with opposite fabric pairings.) Cut down the middle on your line. Open it up, and you have 2 whole squares. Press both squares in the same direction. I did orange over green. Cut those the opposite way, perpendicular to the seam line, so you have 2 new triangles. Sandwich 2 so colors are opposites each other. Draw that pencil line for accurate sewing ! Pin, and sew. You will have perfect points.

These didn't wind up on the block where I thought they would, but I have an idea to make them into a separate block today. I see this quilt becoming a little bit of a mishmash of ideas. The alpaca fabric is from the "Daydream" line from Kate Spain, and so is the pink tree border. I think the whole quilt will be a little bit like my own daydream.

I'll let the Doxie girls have some breakfast, and then we're off to sew. It's going to be a great morning.

Come on, Doxie girls.

Let's get on with our day.