Sew Joy: fabric picking

Showing posts with label fabric picking. Show all posts

Two Months of Secret Garden Blocks

>> Wednesday, June 15, 2016

May got really busy for me somehow - procrastinating on projects put me behind on the quilts I'm making for me. This is the May block from Pat Sloan's My Secret Garden block of the month.

My Secret Garden May Block

I really wanted to use the blue Denyse Schmidt print that I've been holding onto as the background. Using 4 different colors for the pinwheels really adds some movement to the block. This is the first block the fabric in the darker inner border has made an appearance - I will have to start including it in more!

I'm really happy with how my June block turned out. Pat showed two fabric placement variations which you can see here. I wanted to try and make my center star float so I chose two different light fabrics for the star background fabrics.

My Secret Garden June Block

I also took another design cue from Pat - I noticed one of her blocks used the three primary colors (red, blue, and yellow.) I have a tendency to use the secondary colors a lot - green, orange, and purple. I went through my stash of fabrics set aside for this project and got as close to the secondary colors as I could! Fun to see how the coral Tula pink fabric has played several different roles for me in these blocks.

Now I'm caught up on this project until next month;)

How are you doing with your Block of the Month projects?

With Joy,

Sarah V.

Progress on Picking Block Fabric for Aurifil BOM

>> Tuesday, June 11, 2013

I started working on the June Aurifil BOM on the weekend. My fabrics were brought upstairs by my daughter so I could play in bed!

Pat Sloan went through her process of picking fabrics this month on her blog. You can see her process here. I thought I'd share mine too.

I keep my fabrics for the blocks in a pile and put the fabrics I used for the last block on the bottom. This way my fabrics are already in rotation so that, hopefully, all of them get a fair shot at being in the blocks equally.

In this photo you can see my fabric pile on the left and my small leftover cuttings from previous blocks on the right.

I looked at the block next and checked how many fabrics it uses, plus a background.
Here's the next 5 fabrics in my pile. The blue is my background.

Then I looked at the block again and compared its design composition to the first five blocks.

Sorry for the glare on the photo I can't seem to edit it away (remember I am using my bed for my design wall!)

I sorted the blocks and discovered that there are already 3 blocks (the bottom row) with a lot of background showing and only 2 with very little background (the top row).
This month's block falls into the category of having a lot of background.

How did this affect my fabric choices?

Well, it did and it didn't!
I wanted to make sure that fabrics that had dominant roles in those blocks in the top row didn't take over in this block.
I wanted fabrics to look different in this block because they are each going to have to hold their own against the background and in relation to each other.
The designer used a lot of 'fuzzy' cutting in this block, which I like.
I'm trying to look at different parts of the patterns in these fabrics and showcase them in this block.

We'll see how I do! I had to stop after cutting a few pieces. The motion still hurt my abdomen which is healing, but still quite tender (sneezing and hiccups hurt!) It may be a bit before I go any further, but I wanted to share my process - and progress - before it slipped away from me.

With Joy,
Sarah Vee