Secret Lives of Colour quilt a long

 This is my first blog post about this quilt along! I guess I have only shared photos over on Instagram, which doesn't really help me track projects and progress. I'm still behind, but this is where I'm at today :)

This is where I started - with the Canadian version of the book by Kassia St. Clair and some of the fat quarters of Anna Maria Horner fabrics that I bought last year. These are my background fabrics!

The quilt along is another fun quilting adventure thought up and delightfully executed by Pat Sloan. I have really enjoyed the process so far. Pat chose three different very light colours for her background fabrics - and I didn't! In fact, I have decided to use a variety of Anna Maria Horner fabrics. I started with some from the Love Always collection and have since purchased more fat quarters from different lines after deciding this extra challenge of using large print fabrics for the background is really fun. 

Skip ahead a bit and here are the first two rows complete. All the blocks are shoo fly blocks and vary in three different sizes. I have started in each row to reverse one block so that the colour is the background. 

This is the beginning of the third row. Pat has made a brilliant layout, which combined with using the shoo fly block, basically made me have to join this quilt along!

It is free - the book is not and it's the guide for the choosing colours for the blocks - but the instructions are free from Pat. You can find the details here: Secret Lives of Color sew along Pat also includes the sew along in her daily videos so it is possible to go through her videos for the colours - but the book makes it handy to match fabrics to the coloured edges of the book.

At this point I am looking ahead to blue fabrics as that's the colour after purple. I need this purple fabric for a block though, but have to use it to make binding for this quilt first! 

What quilt along are you enjoying right now?

With Joy,

Sarah V.

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Rounding Up Resources

This month's Sew Modern Bee "Queen", Nicole,
requested a block with circles.

Here's a peek at her inspiration mosaic at flickr




I found some inspiration at the V&A website

Then I started looking around my space for techniques and tools.



Anna Maria Horner's first sewing book has some great circle making tips.

Allison's tutorial makes circles sing!


But I also found some interesting things in my stash.




A really old paper pattern that I discovered in a garbage bag of fabrics I was given a few years ago. {not to worry, the fabric isn't in the garbage bag anymore - some of it is on the back of my string blocks}. Most of the patterns I have used as wrapping paper to give gifts to quilters. This is the only one I have left.

I used this circle template that I inherited from Granny's stash. Apparently it was marketed to make yo-yos. If you click on the last picture you can read some of the printing from the back of the packaging.

Nicole wants the block to be a surprise, but

here's my signature block I sent to her.

With Joy,
Sarah Vee

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