Working with Dwindling Fabrics

I was running low on a favorite hand dyed fabric when I decided to make a quilt with it. It’s the navy and yellow grid shown below, indicated by the largest arrow.

I pulled every other hand dyed fabric that would go with it and this is the selection, shown above. Smaller arrows indicated two more fabrics that were down to fairly small pieces. I was loving the energy of these bright fabrics and excited to get started.

I pinned everything up on the design wall and began to edit. Now you get a better idea about the sizes of the pieces. Some of the fabrics had too much pattern and would draw attention away from my feature fabric.

Some fabrics removed, I continued to study the combination. Still some competing fabrics.

After deleting the “show stoppers” I thought this combination would be workable.

I’d still need to edit and carefully consider as I proceeded. What about that near-solid navy? Will it be too strong? And the brighter blue grid on the left: too bright?

This was my starting point. These fabrics went on my work table, and all the others were moved out of sight. I didn’t have a design plan. My only plan was to feature that navy/yellow gridded fabric. All my decisions would be in support of it. I knew this would be challenging, but also invigorating.

In my next post, I’ll show you how I began to compose the design. It was fun!

Ellen Lindner
P.S. Do you ever work without a plan?