NOTE: If you’re looking for the Looking Glass Blog Hop post & Giveaway, it’s *here*. I hope you stay and visit a while! 🙂
I had so much fun in my sewing room Saturday. I was the only one home — for the entire day! — and I ditched the laundry, sweeping, dusting, you know, those boring things.
My daughter-in-law has asked for a wallhanging for Christmas. She loves to decorate with a muted color palette – brown, tan, dark red, cream – so I need to make something that will fit her style.
For a while I’ve been really stumped and had no idea what to do. But Saturday I decided to tackle it. I have a whole collection of charm packs so I started by pulling out anything that had colors in it that she likes. I was surprised at how many I had! If you’ve read my blog for very long, you know that I usually work with brighter colors.
I decided to use the Collection for a Cause (Mill Book Series) charm pack. The prints and color palette of this pack is exactly her style. I had two of them, so I was set to go.
I started with a simple pattern to create the center block. It was part of a table topper pattern and I only used the middle section. (If you’re interested, it is a pattern by This & That called Town Square.)
Then the real fun began! I just started playing with the charm squares, adding pieces to the design on the wall. I decided to treat the center block as a medallion and add rounds to it until it was the size I wanted.
Here I added a thin 1″ sashing and then a border of the charm squares cut in half. The charm pack had a lot of red prints but I tried to avoid using too many as DIL has a dark red wall in her living room where she will hang this.
The next border was a brown print that reads solid. All of the fabric has come from my stash – who knew I had these colors? I will have to purchase fabric for the backing, but I’m excited that’s all I have to buy.
This is the final quilt top. I love how it looks right now and I was feeling pretty creative. I had so many ideas; if I had fat quarters of the fabric pieces I could have done so many different borders. Flying geese, half square triangles, miniature star blocks, oh! the possibilities! Food for thought for future purchases…..
If I made this again I would change a couple of things but once it’s quilted I know I’ll love it. Even though it seems pretty stark right now, I like the brightness in the center of the quilt. It will tone down some through the quilting and I can’t wait to see the finished project.
I’m planning on quilting it with crosshatching, but that might change. I can also see feathers on it, and since that is a more traditional design it might work better. What would you suggest?
I really enjoyed the process of making this wallhanging and even like the color scheme. A lot. Who knew?
I’m linking up with Anything Goes Monday – be sure to check out all the great projects!
How fun! I hope she loves this. For quilting, I would definitely have fun playing with different designs on the borders – a crosshatch in the center medallion might be perfect with feathers in every other border and then more crosshatch? I hope you have fun quilting it!