WIP Wednesday–Lots going on!

Lots going on around here at the moment!   I guest posted about using Microsoft Word to design a quilt over on the Modern Quilters Ireland blog this week and I've got 3 projects with deadlines in the next few weeks on the go, so have been busy sewing, pulling fabric and buying batting!

Sorry I haven't had too much time to spend writing and sharing about the projects but here's a not so quick progress report.

Techniclolour Galaxy
I uploaded my colour scheme to the Palette Builder tool on Play Crafts and it helped me pull colours off my Kona colour card.  Some were spot on and some where the new colours added recently which I don't have so I picked a good few chips that were pretty close to what I wanted.  I found curry and sunflower too close to each other in reality so opted for butter and sunflower instead!
These are the fabrics I chose from my stash that are close to the colours the palette builder suggested from the drawing.  Some are really close and some a little off but still perfectly usable.  Really happy with how this this worked out!

The fabrics are shot cottons I bought from Craftsy.  They had a sale on last year with quite a bit off and I bought both the light and dark fat quarter bundle of the Kaffe Fassett collection.  They are very close in colour to my Kona colour card chips!

I definitely don't have enough blues! I will need quite a bit of blue for this and managed to pull 4-5 fat quarters.  I've heard shot cottons shrink a bit when washed and am not sure how to mix them with other fabrics.  Anybody used these fabrics before?  Any advice?  Hawthorne threads and Cotton Patch has them for sale by the yard so I will have to purchase to supplement what I have on hand.

I'm not sure yet if this will be an all solids quilt or to mix in some prints.

For the moment though, I have enough to get started with block number one which involves cutting templates and using a white bias strip to cover the joins and hold the pieces in place.  I've bought a clover bias maker 3/8", steam a seam lite 1/4" fusible strips and some Moda Porcelain ( a gorgeous off white) from my local quilt shop (The Limerick Quilt Centre) and will let you know how I get on with this next week (first time doing this!)

Reflections
The Irish Patchwork Society & the Northern Ireland Patchwork Guild have a Hands Across the Borders exhibition and this year the theme is Reflections.  The quilt has to be maximum 1m square.  I've had an idea of a raindrop creating a ripple and the light reflecting through it in my head since the theme was announced and I just can't shake it. 

In the making, the triangle seemed too harsh a shape for the curves so it changed quite a bit to the natural tear drop shape of rain.  I chose the light and blue fabrics from the architextures range which I bought from Fluffy Sheep Quilting.

I had intended to make this about 21" (the length of a fat quarter) but in talking with G we decided bigger might have more impact in such a simple design and go mad with the quilting (eek!) so I up sized it to about a yard square.

I sewed the dark fabric onto the light blue about half way down and folded it back to have it layered over the lighter fabric.  I used a print out of my design to create a template to cut away the top dark fabric with my rotary cutter (scary moments!) and reveal the lighter fabric underneath.

In keeping with the curvy ripples the raindrops became less angular and more curvy applique pieces. So now I just have to stitch the raindrops, baste and quilt it - all by March 13th!

This is the quilting plan so far.  Circular quilting echoing the ripple and adding in some rainbow colours, wavy wiggle on top maybe?  I'm going to try and quilt in a dragon fly too.  Nervous about this one - not sure I can pull it off as I imagine it!

Oh well, it's only fabric, what's the worst that could happen?

Lost in London 84" quilt for Make Modern
And the last project but most important is to get my submission quilt for Make Modern Magazine finished.  Pattern is written, blocks are made and am onto piecing the quilt top - hope to baste it on Saturday for quilting all next week!  I am going to attempt to quilt this on my home machine all by myself!  No pressure then.  Just needs photographing by March 15th!

I can't show you pattern details but here's the fabric I'm using!

So that's what's going on around here, what are you guys up to?  Any WIP's you really must get finished?

Linking up to

WIP Wednesday - Technicolor Galaxy

This years Block of the Month at Pile O'Fabric is the fantastic Tecnicolor Galaxy quilt design. Maybe it was the rainbow or maybe the space connection but this one really caught my eye and I knew I was going to have to sign up for it!

Alyssa's BOM designs are written with the aim of skill building and they are always really well explained. Plus Alyssa offered the Modern Quilters Ireland group a discount if we signed up with more than 5 people which we did!  For the month of January it was gathering materials and printing templates, which I decided instead to do as I went block by block and January was crazy busy too, so I basically didn't do anything on this at all!

Then in the Facebook group people started sharing their fabric pulls and Alyssa had given us a blank drawing to colour in and they were all so gorgeous, I felt a little guilty for not getting into this properly!  So for the last few evenings, I've been colouring in too!

During the Color Intensive Class I took with Stitched in Color, we approached colour theory from a mood or feeling we were trying to create and used words to help focus on the colours to choose for the project.   I asked myself, what is it about this quilt that I am drawn too?  The cosmic aspect had me thinking about the night sky and that sense of wonder & amazement you get when you look through a telescope and see Jupiter for the first time or seeing images of the aurora and Hubble photos of the universe. So wonder became my word of choice for this quilt and I am always filled with that when I see photos like these.

Images from google image search "Nebula"

These images came from a google search for Nebula and I eventually chose these four as my colour inspiration for the quilt.   Using photoshop I coloured in the drawing we were given, starting from the centre outwards and came up with this:

So now my original intentions of following the rainbow colour scheme that attracted me to the quilt design in the first place have gone out the window.  I had planned on using my stash fabrics on a low volume background too!  Now, I'm using my Kona colour card to help pull fabrics for my dark sky version.  I have little to no jewel tones in my stash and am going to need a bucket load of blue!  And I was doing so well at not buying too much fabric this year too.  I think I can break my fabric diet for this one though.

Linking up to