At the beginning of 2016 I made a resolution — No New Quilts!
I’m sure many of you will not be surprised to hear that things did not work out quite as I’d planned, just like most, if not all, of my previous new year’s resolutions. However, even though I am currently working on two new quilts (basket medallion and denim coverlet), I finally delved into the closet of WIPs, and I’m determined to tackle those old projects, one little bin at a time.
The first project I selected contained 20 Grandmother’s Fan blocks made with 1930s scraps from my stash — they’re a little different because my usual scrappiness is more controlled with the mostly two-color blocks. To make 36 more blocks, most of my time was spent searching through my scraps looking for just the right prints. Sometimes I didn’t have enough scraps to make 4 matching blades, so I substituted — other times the scraps weren’t large enough, so I pieced the pieces. It’s all part of the process when you become addicted to working with vintage fabric.
I haven’t done a black background in a ages — not since the feedsack crazy quilt I gave my daughter when she went to college — but I like it with these pastels. I used one of my son’s old sheets (from high school, because I never throw fabric away), which has been washed so many times that it’s more of a very dark gray.
The quilt top is 52″ x 67″, and I want to use pastel perle cotton to quilt it. What do you think . . . one color (which one?) or multiple colors? UPDATE: After reading the comments from Dottie, Virginia and Joyce, I took their advice and auditioned a few different thread colors. I realized right away that I didn’t like the colored stitching on black, which seemed busy and distracting. I’m still planning to use the perle cotton, but with black on the black and pastels on the fans. I want to keep the quilting pattern simple — maybe a variation on Baptist fan.
