I've been sewing like a mad thing since we got back and have finished piecing my Dead Simple QAL quilt top. It's made up of 16 different solids cut into 5"squares and then sewn into 12 x 16 rows. In the end I decided to sew blocks of 4 squares before sewing them into rows and then sewing the rows together. I grouped colours together in what I thought were pleasing combinations. I alternated the layout of the the squares with the blocks hoping that it would give me the variation in colour layout that I was looking for.
It turns out that some of my squares were less square (that's another story that'll I bore you with in another post) than others so lining them up properly worked well in some places and less so in others. I also found that when sewing the columns of squares together even though I pinned on either side of the seams some squares lined up at the corners and some didn't. This bugs me a bit especially in one row but I'm not gong to obsess about it and my daughter certainly doesn't care and neither do my 2 boys as they've both demanded to know when I'm making their quilts.
Now when I finished piecing this I was pretty pleased with it but now after photographing it I'm less so. I really don't like the colour combos on the last three columns on the right hand side and now that I've seen that I can't get it out of my head. Also the turquoise I bought in Perth is too bright. Next time I make a quilt like this I'll mock up layouts on the computer first instead of just winging it. This colour scheme is really not my thing either. I am making it for my daughter and she's really tricked with it but if I had the chance to make it again I'd do it differently.
Here's a lovely quilt made by Brooke at Pitter Putter Stitch made using similar kona solids with some grey added, kind of wish I'd made mine like this but with white centres. Kirstin vetoed adding white and since it's her quilt I went with that but ......hmmm think it might have been really nice with some white.
I had also considered adding a charm pack of Just Wing It but I reckoned I'd probably need 2 packs and to be honest I just don't have the cash for that right now. As it is I'll need to put this aside until next month before buying the wadding and backing fabric.
Anyway that's a bit of a long ramble and I'm hoping that when I dig this top out again to finish it I may not feel so meh! about it.
Why not pop over the the Lily's Quilts flickr group and see some other incarnations of the Dead Simple Quilt.
Bye for now
