Eads Quilt Along #7: It’s time for a shuffle.
While it’s been fun looking at this guy, I’ve been feeling the urge for a shuffle. Mixing things up can be a great thing, and after 6 weeks, I figured a change of scenery could do me some good. (For anyone counting the blocks, I am missing some, which I only realized after taking the pictures. They’ll get added back in a future sewing session.)
But to start–and to back up a bit–I pulled some fabrics for the week. To be clear, I’m not totally consistent on how I do this. Sometimes I’ll grab fabrics as I make blocks, and other times I’ll grab fabrics and map out the pairs ahead of time for an entire stack of blocks. This week I went for the latter approach.
My starting point was a lighter piece of Homespun (to continue with the Homespun enthusiasm from last week) to which I added some Leah Duncan and some fabric from my Doe and Friedlander collections.
It’s soft, but with some spunk.
I like them. And the clean slate-ness of this felt kind of liberating. (Especially after an intense few weeks of deadline sewing…)
This batch of blocks is soft, warm, kinda wild and textured. I’m in to it.
After making these 10, I started to play with everything else.
It was easier to play with these guys on the floor, so I moved the foam core to another side of the room–a benefit of movable design walls.
The great thing about this was that I started to see the blocks and their relationships in new ways.
One happy accident was the greens and golds. I never would have thought to put these guys together, but it’s now one of my favorite things.
Tips:
+ Take everything down from the design wall and mix it up. See what happens when you give yourself a new perspective.
+ Take a picture before you take everything down so that you can go back to where you started if you decide that you really want to. OR, the photo will serve as a good reminder of the evolution of your project. Looking back reminds you of how far you’ve come!
+ Pay attention to accidental neighbors. This is where I always find fun stuff.
Wow, this is really starting to look amazing – so much colour playing so nicely together. You really do have such a great eye for combining colours. I’m glad to hear green and gold (Aussie colours) are appealing to you – maybe you’ll come back again? I hope so!
Thanks so much, Kirsty! I actually had no idea about the green and gold…but maybe that is my subconscious giving the Aussie shout-out. I love it! There’s actually more gold and green coming, so stay tuned. 🙂
Do you mind sharing what that turquoise and orangey coral fabric is? I just caught up with your blog and now I’m pretty sure I have to make an Eads quilt…like right now!
Hi Elizabeth! It’s a great fabric, isn’t it? I mention it in the #2 post, but it’s a piece I picked up at the Amitie shop in Australia. Unfortunately, I do not know more than that about it…sorry!