Monday, November 14, 2022

Graduation quilt for granddaughter - Post #2

I was so disgusted with the progress on the quilt for my granddaughter that I took everything back off the design wall and took the blocks to my small quilt group for advice.  

Here's the comments I got from them:
   Ditch the bright green blocks
   Ditch the tissue box rectangles
   Ditch the striped pieces
   Keep working on it with the pale colors

Here's what I thought I needed to do:
  Ditch the large 16" squares and use them in a different quilt.  
  Use some ivory to brighten up the quilt.
  Try to make it more of a colorwash instead of jarring background colors.

After the input, I decided to try drafting it as an on-point quilt with the 3 large blocks down the center.  Here's my sketch:



And here's the progress 


It started to look half way decent; or I just started getting used to the pale colors.  Nope, it still wasn't doing anything, so off the wall it went again.  I added some blocks of beige and white stripe.  Here's the next attempt:


Still yucky!  So I put the stripes on point and got rid of all the dark blocks.  Here's the one that led to the final layout.


Stay tuned to see if this paler version made it to the end.

Monday, November 7, 2022

Graduation Quilt for granddaughter

One of my granddaughters is a junior in high school and is taking classes at the community college.  That means that its time to start thinking about and working on her high school graduation quilt.  I asked her mother what colors she likes now, and she said "Sage and beige".  Oh.  She used to like rainbow colors, nice and bright.  I'm not that keen on pastel quilts, but I decided I must slog through it.  

I picked out all the sage and beige fabrics in my stash, and surprisingly, I had some of both!  I definitely needed to go shopping for more beige, and maybe something more solid.  So off to the quilt stores I headed!   Here's the pile.


The pattern.  I auditioned several patterns that I thought were younger and more fun.  Most of them, though, depended on distinct value differences.  Sage and beige are too close to get that effect.  So, I decided to do an improv square in a square quilt.  Here is my sketch:


I made the large square in a square blocks and the long ones. 


Then I started doing improv to fill in the blanks.  I love doing improv piecing  For this quilt, most of the squares will end up 8".  Within that parameter, though, there is a lot of leeway as to how the blocks are constructed.  Some of them are colorways of 5 fabrics separated by a solid color.  Some have small squares within the square to alter the sizes.  And some are square within squares with the center piece different sizes and borders of different widths.  So much fun!  Showing some progress with these different blocks.


Well, I hated it.  It was just a jumble of crap.  It didn't look "young", or cohesive, or interesting.  Perhaps it was the winter blahs setting in or perhaps it was the colors that didn't appeal to me.  I pulled all the blocks off the wall and reorganized them.  Still, it was yucky.  

Stay tuned to see what I did.