Thursday, April 12, 2018

When you plan your quilt, but another idea captures your mind!

That's the funny thing about doing a challenge quilt.  At least for me!  I can have an idea all planned out, walk into my sewing room, pick up some fabric and end up going in a whole different direction!  At least I can use my original idea for another time! 

This months Island Batik Ambassador challenge is one that really speaks to me as I love vintage quilt design!  I am a good hand quilter, so often find myself being asked to hand quilt grandma's quilt top and I really enjoy working with the traditional blocks and fabrics.  One of the fun things about working with batiks is that they instantly give a traditional quilt block a look that is more modern.

I had my whole quilt planned out, but for some reason when I walked into my sewing room yesterday, I spied a stack of fun colors of my Island Batik Scraps and thought that it would be really fun to make a new version of one of my older patterns.  I love my All Seasons Basket pattern in florals, but I think it's going to be super pretty using my batik fabric!

Since I'm working with scraps (which is one of my favorite inspirations behind vintage quilts), each basket will be a different color.  Not sure what I'll use for the sashing or borders at this point, but sometimes it's fun just to play with what you already have and see what happens! 

I'm loving the yellow basket!  The background is a lovely pale yellow basic called Oatmeal - I barely had enough for my background pieces, but I think it's just perfect for my baskets.  If I hadn't had enough, I would have gone scrappy with the backgrounds as well.  That's what the quilt-makers in the past did - use up what they had, even if they had to piece smaller bits together to make it work.  I love seeing details like that in traditional quilts.  Not to say that all quilters did this, there are many lovely vintage quilts that you know the fabrics were carefully chosen and purchased for that purpose. 

Are you inspired by vintage quilts?  What's your favorite vintage block or pattern?  I'd love to know!

Have a joyful day!

1 comment:

Quilting Tangent said...

I like stars, pinwheels and Mariners Compass blocks.