Sunday, May 08, 2011

Lone Star Color Choices

I've been plunking along on the Lone Star blocks. After the quilt retreat in March I finished the blue variegated star and felt really good. I selected colors for the next block and dove in. Each block is 20" so I sorta feel like I'm making blocks big enough for a wall hanging, I feel like I'm making 20, 20" quilts!



These fabrics were chosen to be more like the circa 1860 fabric palette I think I'm working with. I didn't feel real confident about the combination, but cut and pieced anyway, figuring the color scheme would emerge as I went along. I liked the burnt orange, navy and red, but the brown and poison green were a challenge to use.





With this method of making a Lone Star you have to do a lot of piecing before you see what the first arm of the star's going to look like it. Meh - but still I pieced.



At this point I could now see the flow of colors around the star and where the drop outs were. I made myself continue to piece arms, hoping it would grow on me. When the kids came up for the weekend, they looked at it and gave their perspective. None of us liked the brown, it was muddy, dropped out and made the colors on either side of it look crummy. We had a long conversation about what works in the other stars and where I wanted to go from here. Nathan summed it up, "I understand you want to challenge yourself to work in a color palette that's unfamiliar to you, but do you want a quilt when you're done, or another UFO?" Frank said, "I hate to see you work so hard at it and not enjoy the outcome. You'll probably only make this quilt once, wouldn't you rather love it when you're done?"

Yes. I packed these pieces away. Lesson learned, go with your gut.

1 comment:

Colonial Clothiers LLC said...

Any idea what the time period is on that green? It's the same exact one as in a quilt I'm considering buying. Apparently it was a pooular fabric!