So here it is. Final planning has been done, and fabric chosen, so perfect time to start the thread. This will be a follow along thread, so I'll be popping every single step out for you to peruse and feel free to ask any questions you may have.
I decided to make a lap quilt, 60" x 60", using an FPP design I haven't used before. It's a nested square spiral or twisted log cabin design. Due to the nature of the design you need mutiple blocks in order to get the full effect. As I wanted a lap quilt, that meant I had to shrink the block to 5" in order to get a good volume of blocks so the design show well. This means I will have 10 blocks by 10 blocks - that's 100 blocks! But as it's FPP I'm not too worried, and as each block is identical, just spun 90 degrees it will be a long game of repetative sewing along lines!
As it's a square spiral there are 4 arms and I had to decide the colours and fabrics. I like blue and green, so I thought blue and green had to be in it! That left me with the choice of leaving it with just two colours, or going up to three or four colours. I decided that three colours would be the best, as I would need to go for a contrast colour to make up the fourth. I felt that staying in the same area of colour would be nice so went with purple. Each arm is made up of 8 segments, so that means 8 different shades of each colour needed. That also means that there are 32 pieces in each block! With three colours, one colour will happen twice on each block, and I felt the blue would be a good middle to the green and purple, so that's the plan!
Being such a small block the fabrics chosen must be basics or blenders. Looking at a print out to scale of the block, I thought basics were the best option. A print fabric at that scale would not work at all.
As there are 10 5" blocks to the width and length that leaves me with 10" spare, so I spent a while planning my border. Do I go for a 5" border all round or a double border of 2" and 3"? I'm currently leaning towards a double border, but will leave my final choice to seeing the main top all finished.
I was very naughty today and went on Fat Quarter Shop and bought a bunch of Moda FQs in Bella Solids greens, blues, and purples. As they are an American company it will take a while to arrive but I will do piccies as soon as!
I do have some design pictures but I'll leave that for the next post.
This is generally how my design process works, find a design, make up the blocks/pattern and then focus on colours, then on fabrics. Decisions on borders and the colours etc of those and the backing will be made further down the line, but it always hangs in the mind. On a quilt with such a limited palette, much like the bargello in my picture, it can be a hard one to decide the borders until it is finished, as a contrast may be necessary. The bargello just had a deep navy to border and blend, but that's not always the desired effect. The quilting designs also come into it as they may become design features in the borders, as they won't necessarily be on the main quilt as the piecing will most likely (but maybe not!) be the foremost feature. It's all very fun designing, and I like to have everything planned out before I go.
So, any questions?
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