Saffron
80” x80”
A delight for all, full of energy and life. A hippie child, some might say. The only direction she is going is forward, but boy has she picked up some stuff along the way. And maybe left quite a bit behind too. You love her or you hate her, but you can’t deny her brightness.
Did I ever tell you about my dream? I don’t know what it is about perimenopause but my dreams are so vivid and bold, every single night. So when you have a dream about a quilt it feels right to run with it. Of course I did not intend to make a quilt, only make a few blocks to scratch the itch the dream started. But they were too good and too much fun.
The block is one I picked out from Barbara Brackman’s Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Blocks. After the dream I came in to the studio, made a cup of tea and pulled out the book to find the literal block of my dreams. It’s called Crockett Cabin. I chose to make it as an 8” blocks because it is a 16 patch and 2.5” blocks are easy and I knew would use scraps nicely.
In the end, the fabric came from whatever scraps I could cut enough of and then whatever I picked from stash to play with them. My only rule was that there be no black and white prints. Some blocks have pretty strong contrast and some, not so much. I really love the interplay when you do this. It creates a lot of movement in the overall quilt. That contrast also applied to the temperature - warm or cool colours. Sometimes a contrast, sometimes not. This doesn’t always make it easy when it comes to figuring out a final layout, but that creative challenge is worth it. (And my favourite part of making a quilt.)
I did have a different layout in mind as I made the blocks. So much so that half the blocks have the dark as the motif and half have it as the background. The layout I was planning was 100% based on this. However, when making a scrap quilt like this, finding order can be harder than anticipated. My original plan looked like a hot mess. So even though I always say that value is probably more important than colour, in this case, colour cannot be discounted. Creating colour stories and laying out all the blocks in the same direction provided an order even better than I could have predicted. Is the layout you would have chosen? Probably not, but that’s okay. This is my quilt.
There is absolutely no point getting too fussed about the quilting on a quilt like this. You really aren’t going to see it. It serves the purpose of holding the quilt together and adding texture, but fancy designs would only disappear. I quilted this one with an overall loopy meander. Easy peasy. And in green, because it serves as a great neutral on a multicoloured quilt. Plus, it went well with the floral I picked for the back.
When it came time to pick binding I did not want to go with classic black and white on a multi-coloured quilt. It wouldn’t have been right. Truthfully, almost any other colour would have worked, but I liked the idea of yellow. It goes well with the back and it brings out the glow at the centre of the quilt.
Now I have this treasure of a quilt, full of so many favourite fabrics. Yes, I’ve already been snuggling under it.