New Projects

I hemmed and hawed about which project I should start next - a t-shirt quilt I've been meaning to make for ages, or the next original design I have in mind.  So, I finally started with the t-shirt quilt.  

And I have mad So. Many. Mistakes.  The only one I haven't made yet is the one where I cut a one-of-a-kind, unreplaceable t-shirt too small.  I cannot add up the size of blocks to save my life, I cannot figure out the right amount to add to HSTs to get them to come out the right size, I cannot figure out how to put borders on.  

I'm living on the edge by not using any kind of stabilizer on the t-shirts.  I don't want a quilt full of stabilizer.  So far, I've sewn t-shirt to quilting cotton without any problem whatsoever - I just use tons of pins and put the t-shirt fabric on the bottom.  Perhaps the real problem is when you try to quilt it?  

Because the t-shirt quilt mostly involves putting borders on, with some block-making, I decided I needed a leaders-and-enders project and started the triangle quilt anyway.  

My original vision for this quilt was something way outside my comfort zone - an Anna Maria Horner type of mix of dark but bold colors, rather than the separated, orderly stuff I usually go for.   (Prints with more than one color, WHAT?) 

I want a range from red to blue, with lots of purples in between.  I've been saving up some fabric for this, then added a bit more (including some actual AMH fabric).  It's safe to say that right now, red-purples are way more in than blue-purples.  

I thought the pinks looked garish because of the nighttime lighting, but then I took another picture this morning and it still looks garish.  It doesn't look garish in person.  The pinks do stand out, but not as much as in the pictures.  

As you can see in the lower right-hand corner, I'm trying out a more random layout than the hexagons, and I think I'll finish the hexagons and then mix it up a bit.  Maybe pull out the lightest pink.  There are a couple more fabrics that didn't fit into the blue, blue/purple, and red/purple categories that I made up to make the hexagons, and I can intersperse those a bit, too.  

Once this is ready to start sewing together, I can go back to redesigning the t-shirt quilt after adding borders that made a square way too big to fit into the neat little grid I'd gotten all the other squares to agree to.  

Designing is always interesting.  This one is coming out close to my vision for it, but it turns out my vision doesn't look how I was expecting.  Weird.  

Happy crafting!