My idea, thus far, is to cut a small piece of each fabric you buy for a project right away. By using some of the new fabrics immediately, I know right away what I like and don’t like. I also know whether I have enough of my favorite new fabrics to use in larger quantities. By using at least some of the new fabric right away I get the opportunity to buy additional yardage before the designs go out of print.<\/p>\n
In the later versions of these quilts, I have also started to include fabrics I purchased previously. In some cases, I cut different sizes to denote the new vs existing fabrics in the quilt.<\/p>\n
This practice has been really successful for me and I am pleased with the quilts that have come out of this project. While the quilts look very similar (gradated colors\/fabrics), they are each unique in their own way. The process is also a big challenge. Gradating commercial fabrics is a lot harder than it seems. I find it a good challenge each year and feel I do improve with the exercise.<\/p>\n In the 2008 piece, I just used a simple rectangle. It turned out that I really liked working with that rectangle shape. I started thinking about gradating the colors, but didn’t obsess about it in FOTY 2008<\/a>. These quilts turn out to be great exercises in color.<\/p>\n FOTY 2009<\/a> uses a modified block from Bill Kerr and Weeks Ringle called Zanzibar. I tried more with gradation using the outside fabric of the block.<\/p>\n FOTY 2010<\/a> was leaps and bounds ahead of the previous two. I am still very proud of it. I love it as well. It set me on a new course for arranging the patches in future pieces. FOTY 2010 was in an exhibition of scrap quilts held at the San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles.<\/p>\n FOTY 2010 made me bold, so with FOTY 2011<\/a>, I went with triangles in two sizes. I used the Fons & Porter Pyramid ruler, which is a great ruler.<\/p>\n I decided to go back to squares and rectangles so FOTY 2012<\/a> has a simpler look, but still uses squares and rectangles. The gradation\/ colorwash effect turned out very well– better than I expected and better than in previous years. Practices makes perfect.<\/p>\n FOTY 2013<\/a> use 3″ squares.<\/p>\n FOTY 2014<\/a> started out using 3″x5″ rectangles. In the process of putting the top together, I cut them down to 4″ x 5″<\/p>\n FOTY 2015<\/a> is one of my favorites and I think that has do with the combination of rectangles and squares incorporated into the design. I am reluctant to use the same shapes over and over, but I do love the squares and rectangles together.<\/p>\n Fabric of the Year 2016<\/a> used a 3 inch square.<\/p>\n Fabric of the Year 2017<\/a> used 3 inch x 6 inch rectangles.<\/p>\n Fabric of the Year 2018<\/a> was the first to use a constant fabric. I used a black solid.<\/p>\n Fabric of the Year 2019<\/a> was the second to use a constant fabric.<\/p>\n Stay tuned for future versions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When I purchase fabric, I am not buying just yardage. I buy a dream, a finished project. Thus, before I started this Fabric of the Year project, I found it really distressing to discover a lot of fabrics in my fabric closet from which I had never even cut one square. Fabric of the Year … Continue reading “Fabric of the Year Quilts”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":5312,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-5773","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artquiltmaker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artquiltmaker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artquiltmaker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artquiltmaker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artquiltmaker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5773"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/artquiltmaker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5773\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54006,"href":"https:\/\/artquiltmaker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5773\/revisions\/54006"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artquiltmaker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artquiltmaker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"FOTY](\"http:\/\/artquiltmaker.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/PICT5203sm-295x300.jpg\" "\\"FOTY")
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