Quilt Journey – the beginning

Well the best laid plans always seem to change don’t they?  I wanted to do a quilt along but it looks like I’ll need to hold off for another month at least on that since all of the sudden I have three quilts to make in the next few weeks. lol  So much for being slow! I’m thinking that I will do the Quiet Cabin quilt when I am able to finally do a quilt along because I want to have one of my own and it’s a quilt that lends itself so well to anyone’s tastes in fabric etc.  But more on that later.

I wanted to share with you the start of my #QuiltJourney quilt.  If you recall, a group of friends and I are doing a Round Robin style bee, each with our theme and ideas.  I was supposed to have sent mine off already but I just could not decide what I wanted to do.  I was really in love with the idea of a fairy tale quilt and even drafted up a large castle that would require some intense paper piecing on my part… but I’m not quite feeling that for this group anymore.

After going through numerous ideas, I finally settled on this:

These are two starts of quilts that I’ve had around for a while…and yes, I intend to someday make that pattern on the left available…but for now I’m just going to use it for this quilt.  And the stars are made from charms and done wonky style.

I was excited when I put these two up on the wall and saw how great they looked together.  It was already looking like a joint quilt with my own pieces!

So my concept is something like “bright tonal fabrics with a pop of white”.  And they can take it from there.  I’m kind of open to whatever.  That’s the beauty/pain of this experience.  I’m giving up control from here on out.  The girls can do whatever they want.  And I want them to use whatever feels right to them.  So I’ve used pretty geometric patterns so far but that’s not completely necessary for them to do.

Along with each of our quilts, we are also sending a Journal.  We are each beginning our own, again doing whatever we want. I started mine with some simple ideas for my own quilt and what I am basically thinking.  We can do doodles, notes to each other, fabrics, fun pictures, or anything else that inspires us!

I specifically included some sample fabrics of color ideas and designers that I enjoy that will hopefully lead each person to find the right fabrics for me in their own stash.  I loved making the little stack of rainbow squares each individually glued down along the top edge.  The start of many cute things to come in the journal I hope!

So I send mine off to friend Cara, MeaMom, next for her to work her own magic on.  She has a fabulous fabric stash so I’m excited to see what she pulls and adds to this concept.  And somewhere along the 7 person line someone may feel inspired to start sewing it together!  And that’s really fun too! *Pats myself on the back* Look how good I’m being about giving up control! 😉