Maybe I Need More Fabric

Maybe I need more fabric.

My husband would LAUGH at the idea!  With about 1000 pieces of fabric SURELY I must have anything I could imagine, right?  Well, maybe not.  I’m used to working with lots of small pieces (think palm-sized to hand-sized,) but my next quilt would probably need much larger pieces.  I needed to check and see if my stash was up to the task.

My design is shown sketched, below left.  The solid and dashed lines indicate fabric changes. Sure enough, at 36 x 24, some of those pieces will need to be fairly large.

First, I drew a rough idea of my design on a base muslin fabric.  This is full scale and will serve as the base of the quilt.

Then, I pinned up my fabrics to check it out.

Hmm.  I have enough fabric to cover the surface, but some of the pieces are either too busy or too small.  (All the ones on the left are too small.)  But don’t you LOVE those colors together?  I do!

So, I did some shopping: first, locally, and then a little online.  As I waited for my fabrics to arrive, I was glad to have enough to get started.

Only two pieces are cut to shape in the photo above: top center and bottom right.  The bottom right piece is hand dyed and is all one piece of fabric.  However, the top center one is a commercial fabric cut up and rearranged.  I’m quite happy with the way I was able to get it to gradate without harsh edges.

Now I wait for the mail.

Ellen Lindner