Blue and Cream

Here's a peek at a quilt I started thinking about many months as while it was too hot to quilt.  I had purchased a novelty print panel of fabric while on a business trip to California.  This is going to be a gift so I can't show the whole thing but here's where I started. 

I used the panel fabric to pull these fabrics from my stash.  They have all the colors in panel fabric.  At my last monthly quilt group I had asked for opinions on which fabrics to use and got some great feedback.  They gave a resounding "No" on the floral print.  They also nixed the golden yellow, the bright green, and the silver/gray.  Good thing I had lots to choose from!

The stripe done diagonally would work for the binding, and the periwinkle blue worked best.  There were also a bunch of fat quarters that I've been holding on to forever that seemed right.

So in the end it came down to blues with a hint of periwinkle and cream for the background.  My sister had the perfect cream fabric so I got that from her stash.

I cut a few 2 1/2 inch strips from the fat quarters to audition them for the Irish Chain pattern.  It turned out to be too complicated for what I needed.  SInce I've never done one I didn't want to experiment on this particular quilt.  That's a challenge for another day.

I've spent a bunch of time in the past two weeks trying to come up with just the right pattern for this particular quilt.  I'm not surprised it took me so long - it usually does!  But I have to admit that even I was pretty frustrated at myself for a while there.

Normally I don't worry about time, especially when I'm quilting.  For those of you who know me, you know I don't worry about time in general unless it involves an airplane!  This time for some reason I was getting anxious about taking too long to decide on the pattern.  I just wanted to get sewing!  Anyway, I have gathered up just the right combo of blues and creams which coordinated beautifully with the panels.  

Picking the pattern was becoming more and more of a chore each day that passed.  I'd think I had just the right one until I spent some time with it in the sewing room.  Then it would be too complicated (Irish Chain) or too simple (9-patch) or too scrappy or whatever but just not right.  Finally, I went back to the pattern that I had originally picked out when I bought the panels.  It's in the February 2010 edition of American Patchwork & Quilting.  It's called Sweat Tea.

You'll notice that the stars are scrappy but that's not going to cut it for me.  I'll be making the stars out of the different blues but each star will be pieced with all the same colors rather than mixing them up.

I'm off to start the cutting!