The Longer I Quilt, The Harder It Gets

This is the first “original design” quilt I made way back when. At least I thought it was original. I found the design in a McCall’s quilting publication, one of the few quilt booklets available in the 1970’s.

I changed it by substituting the natural muslin for the cutsey yellow print in the one in the book and I doubled the size of all the pieces.

I used Barbara Johannah’s half square triangle method (now a quilting standard) with 1/2 inch seams to make the triangles. I hand quilted it since NO ONE was machine quilting way back when!

I made the quilt top in an afternoon and quilted it in a few days.

I ended up with enough half square triangles for a second quilt as I didn’t read the directions thoroughly!

Of course I now know that changing out a few things on a design does NOT make it original!

Fast forward to this morning………..

The seeds for this design were planted several weeks ago. While they grew I had to do some weeding, add some fertilizer. some rain, some lightning and thunder and some sunshine.

I am struggling with Phase 2 on my current composition. I thought I’d add a soft light black and white shibori to the outer edges.

It took away the vibrancy I’d created in Phase 1.

So this morning I am trying a mottled yellow hand dyed fabric.

I think the vibrancy is back, but I don’t want to overwhelm what I created in Phase 1.

You can see both choices in this photo.

It is going to take me some time to made a decision and I will probably try out other fabrics in these positions.