When my twin daughters left for college in August, one of them had a doodle quilt and the other had only a promise of a quilt. I spent a bit of time working on that quilt this week. For those of you who are quilting a long with me, by know you should have gathered your doodles in a notebook, (read more about that here and here) and… stitched a few practice pieces (read here and here).
In addition, I hope you have had time to choose a color scheme. I am going to continue with a cool color scheme: mostly blues with a little green and lavender. Another color scheme I would recommend is alternating a color stripe with a white stripe. I prefer solids or mostly solids– like hand dyes for this project. If you do not have access to hand dyed fabric –( we will have to change that soon….)–Kona solids are very nice to work with and are widely available in more than 100 colors.
Assignment 4
Cut 11 strips : 6-1/2 wide by approximately 68 inches long. (Our final size will be 66 x 66″). I usually have to piece the lengths as I rarely have two continuous yards of any fabric. The heavy quilting will hide the seams.
If you are using an assortment of colors, spend some time playing with the arrangement. A design board comes in handy here, but you can also lay them across a bed or a table and then stand back to see how they look. If you have a digital camera, it is a good idea to take photos of all of your possible arrangements and see how they look from the viewfinder. This gives you a good perspective of the colors as well as a reminder of their proper order. I find that placing the darker stripes on the outside and the lighter stripes in the middle provides a balanced arrangement.
Once you are happy with the arrangement, use masking tape to label the top and right side of each strip, 1-11. This will save a lot of confusion later.
Finally, turn on some soothing music, pour yourself a coke and sew away. This should proceed fairly quickly.
Next week: We will do a little marking and baste our quilt sandwich…Stay tuned…
