When You Can’t See the Forest for the Fabric-y Trees

Read the Tutorial: Bring on the Dancing Horses

These days, I am getting things done. I’ve finished three quilts so far this year, and I have two more throw-size projects I want to wrap up—basted, quilted, and bound—by mid-April. After that, it will be time to start some new projects. Yippee!

But first, here is finish #3. You might remember it from last year’s blog hop with the Fat Quarter Shop. It’s my Bring on the Dancing Horses Quilt. I made another version using Bonnie and Camille’s Hello Darling line. This quilt features the duo’s Daysail.

Can I be honest with you? Daysail may be my least favorite B&C fabric collection. (First and foremost, I’m a Happy Go Lucky girl. Ack—I wish I had bought more of it when it was available!) I’m drawn to some of the fabrics in Daysail, though ...

The marriage of crosshatches and dots? Love! The buoys? So sweet and stashable!

But these stripes? Those catamarans? I would never, ever buy them as yardage.

There’s a lesson in this, though. Now that I see the finished quilt, I look at those same not-so-me fabrics differently and decide that this quilt is a keeper. I think part of this change of heart has to do with simply sewing with Daysail. It’s easy to pass judgment on fabrics when they’re sitting on the bolt, but after working with them, after realizing their potential in my quilt design, I see them through a different lens. Those fabrics that weren’t stars in their own right have a place in the overall line and a place in my quilt. The strong geometry of the bold stripes and the chunky catamaran fabric, for example, is the perfect complement to the sailboats I would have overlooked if I encountered them in a local quilt shop. I wonder how many amazing fabric designs I’ve passed by because I couldn’t see past how they appear on the bolt?

I will leave you with two parting thoughts, dear reader. First off, I’m forecasting a new trend at From Bolt to Beauty. It’s the mostly monochromatic pieced back. This one—in teals from Denyse Schmidt, Joel Dewberry, Tula Pink, and others—makes me super happy.

Second—and if you follow this blog, you know this is a big deal—I’m starting to like the quilting part of quilt making. I’ve realized that how much I enjoy the quilting is inversely proportional to how many stitches I need to unpick. If I take my time and start quilting in the center of a quilt instead of sewing from edge to edge, I am a happier quilter. Sure, there are lots of threads to bury, but I don’t recall ripping out more than a few stitches here and there in this project.

How about you? What kind of quilting makes your heart sing?

Linking up to Finish It Up Friday ...