Color gets the credit

I am part of a small group from the Houston Modern Quilt Guild that is reading Carolyn Friedlander's book, Savor Each Stitch: Studio Quilting with Mindful Design. We have completed the chapter on "line", are currently working on projects for the "contrast" (more about those in the future), and are looking forward to "color".

(Turns out I got a lot ahead of myself -- COLOR isn't next. We still have to do SCALE. Oh well. I just couldn't wait.)

I got a little ahead of myself, and got inspired by Rebecca Bryan's Rainbow Remix from her book "Modern Rainbow". One the self-imposed constraints for my projects for the book bee, is to use what I have on-hand and not buy additional fabric. Of course Anna V. says it OK to buy thread, but that is another story. In any event, I had a charm pack with 42 squares and 20 different colors from Grunge Basics by BasicGrey for Moda. Actually, I only had 40 squares and 19 colors because I used two squares in my "line" project. I love the mostly solid but slightly mottled effect on the fabric. It looks slightly weathered.

Charm squares matched up by color and ready for cutting

 Using Rebecca's quilt as the inspiration, I paired up the colors (lights and darks), wacked the 5 inch squares up into 1.5-2.5 inch strips,  sewed them back together, and then improvisationally pieced the chunks into bigger and bigger chunks. This was really a challenge to use everything -- all I have left is 3 or 4 1 inch pink squares, and a few unusable slivers from trimming. I really did not waste much because after accounting for seam allowances, 40 5 inch squares each cut into 3 strips and sewn back together gives you about 630 square inches of potential finished top and I produced a top that measures just about 620 square inches.

"Color gets the credit"

The whole top is only about 25x25, and one edge is wonky, but I rather like how it turned out. I looking forward to quilting but have no idea yet what that will look like.

Thanks to Rebecca for the inspiration and thanks to you for visiting -- comments and suggestions are very welcome.

Susan