Reworking a Feature Fabric

I decided to make a quilt featuring this fabric.

Because of the strong motif I intended to use this as my featured fabric. I wanted to combine greens and orange-reds, but my selection of greens was limited.

I got this far in the fabric audition process before I had to admit that something was really wrong.

The big green was just not playing well with the other fabrics – of any color. I thought the scale was off so I began to consider how I might change it. What if I just sliced into it and pieced it back together? The seam allowances would make it distort and get smaller. I tried it out by folding the fabric.

That didn’t look great, but it DID look more interesting! I decided to cut into and the Adrenaline was surging! (Part in fear and part in anticipation.)

Here’s a more accurate look at what would happen if I just sewed it back together.

Or, what if I changed the sequence of the sections?

Ooh, that got rather dramatic.

What if I flipped some sections upside down?

A

Or B

Or added another color?

The possibilities were limitless!

Well, I can tell you that I did ALL these things and also changed this one long strip into several smaller “block-ish” units. I’ll show you soon.

I don’t even break a sweat when I do this crazy stuff anymore. But, it was scary the first few times! What’s the scariest reinvention you’ve ever done to one of your quilts?

Ellen Lindner
Who really is an adventure quilter!