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.

The center block.

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!