Going backwards

This is cheating a bit, I know, to post some of the process after I've shared the finished quilt, but I thought I'd just share some photos of Small Pleasures at various stages of construction.

The brief was just in terms of colours "all pinks, from baby pink to burgundy, pistachio greens, duck egg blues" and I knew straight away I wanted to use the teacup fabric, which I have had for quite a while and that I wanted to keep it in fairly big pieces.

So the journey went something like this:

First pull:

Bought some other fabrics, softer versions of the same shades, mostly Tilda, including another tea cup fabric, and made some economy blocks

then realised I needed teapots.

Then I got stuck, looking at the pale and pretty and the stronger, brighter fabrics and trying to work out how they sat together (though I never really questioned that they would, if I got it right).  Started to play and build out from green teacups, like this

And eventually got to here (I have about twenty photos which are effectively different versions of this - me moving blocks about trying to find what works).

And this is where I really got stuck.  This was pretty enough, I thought: I liked it but I didn't love it. Somehow it wasn't quite doing it for me.  This were where I realised what an important part of the process blogging has become for me: having to articulate what I like/don't like and why really focuses my mind and helps me to move forward.  I wasn't blogging this, so I really wallowed around for a while.  In the end I had to email a photo to my sister and my son's girlfriend - as soon as I started to explain to them why I wasn't happy the whole thing became clearer: it is pretty, but almost too pretty.  I needed something to break up all the pink.  Enter some blues at the stronger end of my colour range.  I actually cut back into what I had already done in order to insert blue strips - you can probably see where.

After this I got into the flow and it came together without any more major headaches, but I will be very reluctant to quilt and not blog in the future.

The whole quilt is on yesterday's post, so I'll finish up with one or two more details.

  

AHIQ - Share your improv #3 and a finish!

I thought I'd kick off today by sharing my hitherto unblogged quilt, which was a long time in the making but was finally finished last week.  This is Small Pleasures.  

Front:

Back:

And a few wee details.

Here's the nitty gritty:
82" wide by 92" long; 
28 different fabrics on the front; there are Oakshotts, Kaffe Fassetts, some old Lily Ashbury lines I've been saving for the right moment, some Tilda, some Kona, and goodness knows what else;
the back is mostly made with the leftovers;

Hobbs Tuscany wool wadding;
hand quilted with four different variegated Sulky Blendable 12wt threads, two pinks, two blues and greens.  

The first fabric pull was done on 23rd January, and I sewed the last stitch on 14th November.