A Year Long Quilt? Well I'm Very Excited About It!

Not a lot of sewing this week; I've been too busy planning, selecting and ordering fabrics ready to join in with the free

Skill Builder Block Of The Month 
organised by Alyssa Lichner at Pile O'Fabric

 

It's a 20 block quilt, and Alyssa will provide us with instructions for 2 blocks each month which we'll 'Quilt As You Go' starting Thursday, 17 January and ending in October.  Then in November, we'll add borders, and by December, we'll be ready to piece the whole quilt together and bind it.  Each block will introduce another technique that we may or may not have attempted before:

• Basic Patchwork Piecing
• Improv Piecing
• Strip Piecing
• Foundation Paper Piecing
• English Paper Piecing
• Curve Piecing
• Applique
• Pixel Piecing
• Log Cabin Piecing

I'm not doing it particularly to learn the skills; I've done them all before (apart from, ironically, English Paper Piecing and I'm booked on a course at my LQS in Manhattan in February for that and 'Quilt As You Go') but there's nothing wrong with maybe being shown new ways to do things we already know and to pick up tips along the way.  I also thought this would be a great way to have something on the calendar to look forward to and motivate me throughout the year. I wanted to be involved again in a group activity with all the new quilternet friends, community, shared knowledge, and fun.

Here's a look at a graphic that Alyssa has created for how the finished quilt might look:

Alyssa has created some great instructions for fabric/colour choices, so I decided to make the sampler quilt top in Kona Solids.  I've chosen 5 colour groups and 5 hues within each, along with Ash as a background fabric.  I've poured over my Kona Colour Card for hours and hours, and I'm really pleased with my choices.  I've put the colours together in the chart below, taking the images from the Kona website, but they aren't represented on the screen 'exactly' as they appear on my Kona Colour Card!

My Kona Solid Colour choices for the quilt top

  I thought this was my opportunity to make a patchwork of Kaffe Fassett fabrics for the quilt back.  Someone once told me that you don't have to worry about which Kaffe Fassett fabrics work well together and just go for it because they're all so stunning that it'll work no matter what.  I'm not 100% sure about that, but I've put a selection together and ordered them, and I'll rethink it if necessary once I've got the actual fabric in front of me.

Kaffe Fassett fabrics for the Quilt As You Go quilt backing

I'll be sharing my progress with you all along the way, and I hope some of you will join in too!  I think I'll be a little late starting as there's not much hope of my fabric arriving by Thursday, but I've got my fingers crossed.  There's no pressure and hurry, though, as Alyssa will post the instructions for the first two blocks on Thursday this week and then we've got 2 weeks until she talks to us about quilting them.

I'm really quite excited!!!