On the Road to Spring Quiltalong - The Start

I read Randi's blog regularly, so when I caught in my RSS feed that she was organizing a quilt-along I knew I wanted in. And then, the Ravelympics hit me, and I set super high expectations for myself... I think it was a good lesson in juggling my biggest craft priorities right now, and I'm really pleased to share with you my very first quilt ever - and the first progress pictures of it! Yeay! :)

I decided to use the fabric I won in Spoonflower's first contest. The colors weren't quite right (which is odd, because I'd proofed the printed fabric before that, and hadn't made any changes to my pattern file;) and it's been sitting around my craft room ever since. So, when I read how much fabric I'd need for this quilt my mind immediately jumped to the 2 pieces totaling 5yds of my cocoa squiggle stripe print. It was a bold decision, to use only one print fabric, instead of the ten different prints as suggested. But, I have a very good visual brain that helps me to see things in my mind, almost as clear as pictures - and I knew my concept would work. (Not trying to sound arrogant, it was also the novelty of making a quilt with my very own fabric print!)

The keystone to my plan was to keep the neutral squares plain in color, but texture-rich; the chocolate fine wale corduroy works beautifully, and I had about a half-yard of this teal denim. It's smoother than the corduroy, but the color worked so well with my print, and I love a bit of bold contrast thrown into the mix! Plus, only having a tiny amount of the teal gave me a great design challenge of exactly where I'd place the teal squares!

I had to back my own print with muslin, it was too transparent next to the other, thicker fabrics. Good thing I had a bunch of it in my fabric stash! It was a lot of extra work to double the HUNDRED rectangles I'd already cut; but in the end, I think it'll be worth it - when I'm not nit-picking about how I could have made it better - to death!

So, there's my fabric picks (I wanted to photo them all done & cut, but I still need to pre-wash and cut the corduroy.) I haven't quite decided on the backing fabric, but I have a few options (including more of my own cocoa squiggle stripe fabric, yeay!) I'll also need to decide on binding, but I figure I can make both of those decisions a little farther down the road, hahaha!