Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Quilt Swap block 1
This is the first block of 12 that I completed for the Craftster Lap Quilt 5 swap. It's for chinarockfish, our organizer. There were a few reasons I signed up for the swap.
I wanted to release control of a project. This was also my goal in doing the half square triangle quilt. I hold too tightly to control sometimes. I'm trying to get myself to release some of that in small ways here and there. Hopefully it will start to work on the big things, too.
I wanted to be challenged to complete more complicated blocks. Doing only one seems so much more manageable than doing 12 or more for a whole quilt.
I wanted to be inspired within the constraints of other's expectations. What would I do given the parameters of fabric type, quantity, and directions of others.
I wanted to work with fabrics I might not choose myself to learn to see with a different vision.
I knew the previous swaps resulted in beautiful, creative, well made blocks.
China's fabrics meet this last criteria for sure. Not ones I ever would choose for myself. Here they are individually, from Anna Marie Horner's Garden Party collection.
I used the far right fabric for the center, then built out from there. I made a couple of sketches in colored pencil to try to figure out color placement, then labeled each piece with cutting instructions to make sure I had enough fabric. I was nervous about combining such large scale, diverse patterns. I shifted my focus from the patterns to the colors, refocused, trying to see what the designer and the person who had chosen these saw in them. I think I was successful. I love the finished block, and can't wait to see how it works with the other blocks created by other swappers.
One down, eleven more to go.
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