There is something I like about this 2013 Fabric of the Year project. I like having a piece of each fabric. Once the quilts are finished, I love walking by them and thinking “that fabric would be perfect for this project” or “OH! I remember that fabric. It was such great fabric.” It is like looking at a scrapbook.
I am afraid I am getting tired of it, though. Perhaps I am just tired. I know I am tired, but having the feeling seep over into fabric is scary.
These are blues from the end of the Star Sampler project. Mostly, I made the 4″ Sawtooth Stars from these fabrics. Yes, I did arrange them purposefully to be only a blue batch. I have a whole additional group that I’ll photograph later that is all different colors.
I decided to use the Rainbow grouping I bought at Birch a few years ago. There are some nice modern prints that the BAMQG color group will appreciate and I will finally get to use this group.
TFQ is in town for a visit. She came over on Sunday to hang out and we looked through the fabrics I wanted to consider for the Round Robin project I discussed last week. I am always pleased to have a second set of eyes help clear the fabric fog, but I especially appreciate TFQ’s opinion, because she has a good sense of design. We were particularly focused on the background. We started with the Kona color card and were looking at a Kona Honey Dew. I wasn’t in the mood to buy fabric and she won’t be home until later this week to send me any, so I put the color card away.
Grey Border
We went through a lot of fabrics and finally came up with three finalists: all dots, two grey and one white with rainbow. The first option is a small grey dot, which worked well with the group of fabric I chose. I believe the dot is from a Camille Roskelly line, but am not 100% sure.
Ta Dot in Stone
Ta Dot in Stone is always a good option as well. I thought, and TFQ concurred that the dots were too big and would overwhelm the other fabrics. I do like that Ta Dot Stone as a background, though.
Rainbow Dot
The best option, though is this Rainbow dot. I have wanted to use more dots in my work this year. The white background perks up the other fabrics. None of the other fabrics will bleed into the background and blur the shape of any of the piecing.
I have slowly been cutting FOTY squares. You’ll see a lot of these are the Textured Basics by Patty Young as well as blues and turquoises.
Despite my purported reluctance to use patterns, I found a pattern in Easy Quilts (don’t fall over in shock and horror) that I thought was interesting. In the photo in the magazine, I thought the Patty Young prints looked really fresh. When I got them, they had a bit too much beige in the light areas, but I still like the reds, greens and turquoise. As I was cutting for FOTY, I cut the pieces for this quilt as well. The pieces are large and it will go together easily, but there isn’t really anything to show on the blog yet, especially since my design walls are still both covered with Sawtooth Stars.
I am also in the midst of making a lot of 4″ Sawtooth Stars. I should be able to finish the last 15 today and start putting the top together, thus the other blue fabrics in this group.
I have no business buying fabric. I have a big pile to iron, another big pile to cut and another pile that has not made it to the washing machine yet. Yes, I participate in wine o’clock occasionally, though my #1 stress reliever has come to be buying fabric. Last week was stressful, so I bought fabric. I didn’t buy a lot on my recent trip down south, but I did buy some. It is so nice to buy fabric in person.
Roxanne’s, Carpinteria
We stopped at Birch Fabrics in Paso Robles (aka FabricWorm on the web) on the way down, and Roxanne’s and Quiltin’ Cousins on the way back up. I have talked about Birch before and will write another post about it later to update you on the changes there. I wanted to talk about Roxanne’s first.
Roxanne’s fireplace
Roxanne’s, it turns out, used to the be the Treasure Hunt, which I visited and enjoyed in the past. Roxanne told my mom, who talks to everyone!, that she had a quilt /craft shop in that location for 25 years. After 25 years, she kept the building, but sold the business to someone who owned the Treasure Hunt. Last year the owner of the Treasure Hunt decided that owning a quilt shop was not her idea of a good time, so Roxanne gutted the building, which was completely empty, remodeled, upgraded and re-opened Roxanne’s. They have a large selection of crafting supplies such as yarn and paints, but their biggest offerings seemed to be in quiltmaking. It is a gorgeous building on the inside. I love the wall colors and the decorations.
I don’t know if Roxanne’s was a house at one point. The street seems to have mixed zoning and it kind of looks like a rancher. The inside has been completely redone, as I mentioned, so it is most definitely a shop now.
Roxanne’s cutting counter
One of the reasons to LOVE this shop is the tile mosaic counter front.
California Adventure in Anaheim has an outdoor mosaic like this. I think it was the first one of this creative type that I ever saw and I wanted to do a backsplash like when we remodeled our kitchen in 2007. I wasn’t really up for the amount of work or the cost or the time, though, and let it go. I do want to do a piece like this in a frame as a welcome sign and hang it next to my front door. Something large and impressive.
Roxanne’s, Main Floor
If you hadn’t noticed, I love color. Bright colors and lots of them. I don’t like gaudy, but I love putting interesting color combinations together.
First, of all, the blue of the wall color is fabulous. Second, that wall sculpture add so much interest to the room. It reminds me of It’s a Small World in Disneyland, but not in an annoying way. It makes me smile. The rectangular areas under the roofs of the wall sculpture have small areas for quilt samples.
Roxanne’s, Philip Jacobs fabrics
I almost had a seizure when I saw this group of shelving.
Do you know what it is?
Philip Jacobs fabrics.
A whole 3 long shelves of them!
There were some Martha Negleys thrown in as well. I have never seen anything like this before and could have bought all of them. I didn’t, though. I bought cuts from two different yardages that I hadn’t seen before and walked away before I truly lost my mind. I really need to win the lottery so I can A) not work and sew all the time; B) buy whatever fabric I want in whatever quantity I want whenever I want. It may not seem like I restrain myself when buying fabric, but I really do. I could have bought so much more than I did.
Roxanne’s, Pink dot area
Next to the blue wall on one side is a pink wall. I love the combination of the two next to each other.
This is a great store. Definitely stop if you are in Carpinteria. Well worth it!
I have cut more pieces for the Fabric of the Year 2013 quilt. Many of the fabrics in this group turned out to be more greyed… or not as bright perhaps as I thought. That is the problem with buying fabric online. The colors just don’t reproduce as well our eyes see them.
Still I am pleased with Texture Basics pieces (dots, stripes, diamonds & houndstooth). They are not ugly and the red and teal are particularly nice.
I am already cutting them up for a project, which is great as well.
I am still plowing through the piles of fabric to iron. I iron fabric when I need to think and when I am under stress and it it calms me. I suppose the tactile nature of the fabric helps, but, as I probably don’t need to say, the color and design help, too.
While this certainly won’t be a comprehensive post on everything there is to know about color and fabric choices, I thought I could pass along a little information while it was fresh in my mind.
Finished: Foundation Pieced Block
Above is my completed foundation pieced New York Compass. If I were doing this block over again, I would not choose that specific aqua or that red for the small second foundation pieced strip (next to the corner quarter circle). In the grand scheme of the quilt, it will be fine, but this close up it really takes away from the fine piecing of those spiky triangles. The reds, especially run into each other.
That second foundation pieced part is tricky for my particular version, because my quilt is a two color quilt. I can’t introduce additional colors into the blocks at this late stage and maintain the integrity of my plan. I could have paid more attention to the particular reds and aquas I was choosing and chose fabrics for that small foundation pieced strip that stood out more against the red dot of the spiky triangles.
My mistake?
I grabbed fabrics and started cutting. I did not look at all the fabrics together before cutting. I didn’t try different fabrics to see what the change in look would be. I didn’t make my visual decisions visually. This lesson is a good reminder.
This year’s shape is a 3.5″ square and I have an idea to do a kind of waterfall effect. Stay tuned to see what actually happens!
I had two fabri-lanches in the past few days, so I finally started pressing fabrics and cutting the squares for Fabric of the Year 2013.
There are fabrics for projects in process and also fabrics that just came up on the ‘to press’ pile. I might need to take a day off work that I dedicate to pressing fabric.
One of the things I love about this quilt is that I get to visit with my fabrics again as I sew the top together. I get to say hello and they get to tell me not to forget them and how they can be used.
I also love the anticipation of finishing this piece and hanging it on my wall and looking at it more often, walking by it every day and remembering the fabrics.
I finished the top yesterday and am very pleased with it.
I probably could have finished the back as well, but finishing this top is some kind of miracle, because of how slow I was moving. Working on it, I think it helped to keep my joints a bit more limber. It could just be a perception, though.
I have been a bit unwell and not up to a lot of contemplation about the meaning of this quilt. I thought that a slideshow of the progress might be just the thing to satisfy you. Enjoy!
I may cut a few more, but these are probably the last patches for FOTY 2012 you will see until I sew. I made an effort to press and cut some more pieces. With TFQ’s help I made a little progress.
I sorted all of the patches I cut into color groups, so I am pseudo ready to place the patches and then sew. I may not get to sewing this weekend, though I do hope to do enough placement to make some progress sewing.
I had a good amount of time off over the holidays. I was able to spend some time pressing fabric and cutting pieces for this project. It is a meditative process and was a good way to transition from the difficult last quarter at work to vacation.
The end is drawing near, so I need to speed up the process or work with what I have.
One thing I like about this is that looking at the fabric patches and thinking about the projects on which I am working as well as the new fabrics.
I haven’t taken any kind of inventory of pieces that I have. If I do I can fix any problems, if I don’t it will be a design challenge.
While I am making progress on preparing to sew the FOTY 2012, I still have a pile of fabric to press, not to mention the other pile I have to wash AND press. There is no way for me to get it all done, but I will get as much done as possible before I start sewing at the CQFA Retreat in January.
I do enjoy this process, however. I like seeing these photos and thinking about what I made from the fabrics.
I have FOTY 201o hanging in my hallway and I keep walking by thinking “I need to find that fabric; it would be perfect with X project.” That is really fun.
Time flies when you are having fun. I am enjoying musing over possibilities for this project. I didn’t think I would since I like to get sewing quickly, but I am determined to enjoy this fabric selection process and it, as it turns out, is not difficult.
I bought a couple of fabrics last week when most of the network was down at work, except the Internet. I did do work, really, I did – more than others, I think – but at some point, I couldn’t get into my email and there wasn’t any new work coming in. After you clean your desk and read all your piled up magazines, contracts and make a ton of phone calls that have been put off, what else is there to do but buy fabric? 😉
Dot Background?
The fabrics came yesterday, which was perfect timing, because I had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day and they made me happy. I was able to play a bit and I even washed a couple of the fabrics.
There is always a surprise when I buy multiple fabrics and the turquoise and chocolate dot on white (middle of photo, right) was one of those happy surprises. I really like it and think if it had purple instead of the chocolate, it might be a perfect background for the stars. Still, I like it, but the chocolate does stand out a little more than I would like. I suppose I could add chocolate to the entire piece to add a bit of spark. I’ll have to try some out and see what I think.
I have to make visual decisions visually, so I will make a sample star, as well, before I decide.
Leafy Background?
Really, there is no shortage of blues at my house, but I seem to crave the calm feeling they project, so I keep buying more. The three blues on white in the middle are also background candidates. I didn’t even buy them with that in mind, but thought of it when I saw them.
I almost bought more of the leafy V&Co print without even trying it. I stopped myself, because I want to make a sample and make sure the leafy blues and greens, don’t bleed into the other fabrics, destroying the crispness of the stars. I do think the leafy print would be a bold choice, because of the leaves.
Leaf and Dots
I think the large dot on the middle left would be a pain. I think the pooling of the color at the bottom (top in the photo) would make it hard to use as a background. I do think it will work as an adjunct fabric for a star. The turquoise squares on white are a more conventional choice and might be a good one to fall back on in a pinch.
I keep thinking of this see-through star from someone else’s quilt in the quilt-a-long Flickr group when I think of the background. I don’t think I want to use a solid, but I do like the effect of looking through the star to the background, so I want to be sure and choose something that will help achieve that effect.
Testing the waters
These fabrics all look good together and I think any of them would be fine, really. I think the leafy print looks good with the purples and the greens are similar, too.
At the moment, I am completely ignoring the purples I want, and need, to add. I like that Chicopee purple, but I need something that is a more bluey purple as well, like the background of the Philip Jacobs print. I’ll keep working at the fabric selection.
I have to admit that I thought about completely changing direction and going with pinks. Perhaps I will do two of these at the same time…except that that would mean I would have to pick background fabrics for two quilts.
I started talking about this project in a post a few days ago.
And now back to your regularly scheduled programming.
Yesterday was fun, but I am ready to get back to normal blogging. It was exhausting trying to keep up with the questions and the comments. Look for winners and more tomorrow.
I have been cutting and pressing fabric a little at a time. I realized that I needed to get my act together if I am going to work on this quilt at Retreat at the end of January. I do enjoy looking at the patches on my design wall and thinking about where I bought the fabric, what project I was working on when I cut the smaller squares and future projects I am planning.
I did find that this process was good for putting fabrics together that I might not thought of putting together. I got a Chicopee solids pack (Thanks, Temptress Adrianne!). While those fabrics were waiting to be pressed, they were on top of a large floral by Philip Jacobs and I noticed they all went really well together. There was another dot fabric that was perfect, too. Not sure what I will make, but something.
I have a big stack of fabric to press and cut and another big stack to wash, press and cut. Not my favorite tasks, but not horrible either. Great for calming me down in stressful situations. Too bad they won’t give me the space to set up an ironing board, iron and cutting mat at work. 😉
