Beginning Again

It's been more than a year since I thought I'd start on quilts for our bedroom. I picked out fabric, bought coordinating solid, spent hours working the math and making practice blocks, and then once I had a plan and a general layout... I quit working on it. I did have a lot of other things that needed to get done, but ultimately, it was easy to push this one to the back burner. Then, in a surprise move, we changed around our house and wound up with a different bedroom - one that gets very different light and doesn't work at all the way our old one did. And suddenly, I just couldn't bring myself to complete the plan I had spent so much on already.

I poured over my Pinterest boards, and searched for new inspiration, until I found three options to run past my husband -- who honestly liked them all. So, I chose the one I had pinned most (six times for the same pattern, though different quilts): Random Reflections from the Moda Bake Shop. The directions there are for a quilt that finishes at 60x60, but I'm going to make mine about the size of an XL twin, more like 50x80. I think that should be possible with only a minor change or two.

The starting point on this was to go back to shopping - and believe me, finding jelly rolls that fit both of our personalities and fit within the colors of the room was a struggle. Ultimately, after too many hours browsing etsy shops and the Fat Quarter Shop, I wound up choosing to go with two different jelly rolls to go with our two different personalities, and our two different paintings.

Our bedroom looks something like this (this is a picture from day 2 of the new room), with my great-grandmother's forest stream painting on my side of the room and his grandfather's stormy ocean painting on his side. Since we both use twin comforters unless it is cold enough to necessitate the XL King comforter (in which case I usually use it doubled over and he's usually fine), I figured I could make the same pattern of quilt in colors that more or less went with each of our paintings - though I'd add a little orange and green to his so there was more coordination.

Ultimately, I wound up ordering one jelly roll of Lily Ashbury: Folklore (which must be very new as I'm struggling to find many places to link to so I can show how beautiful it is! This link goes to a view of only the peacock tones) and one of Carolyn Friedlaner: Botanic. I'm going to stick with the same grey solid I purchased to use initially, and hope that the brighter, less primary (than my previous choices) colors of these two rolls will work for what I'm after.

I do think I'll need to add a little more deep blue or deep green to 'his' roll (the one on the right). I may also cut one or two from the mustard/orange tones, but I think it'll work out overall - and if it isn't quite as perfect a match to his painting as Folklore is to mine, he probably won't mind either. Oh, and the grey solid is 'for' his painting, so that's a point in 'his' side's favor -- one that I'm just going to make work for my side.

I could hardly wait to start, so I cut into the solid right away - and although it's taken much longer than I thought it would, I'm making progress!

Approximately 180 2.5 by 10.5 strips -- enough for the 60x60 tutorial quilt, but not enough for my desired twin quilt. Fortunately, I have lots of fabric left, so I think it'll be fairly easy to make the additional strips I need.

It doesn't look like much for more than 4 hours of work - but I've been making certain to iron each piece instead of just finger pressing like I normally would. I really want to minimize issues and end up with two quilts that will last for a very long time. Hopefully I'm far enough ahead on baby projects for everyone that I can take a few weeks off and concentrate mostly on these two quilts. I'd love to have them finished before summer is completely over, though that's a lot to attempt on my current schedule.