Blocking away ...

I tend to go a bit batty if I don't have my creative outlet. Yes I have several projects on the go at once, but who doesn't?

I snuck into my sewing room last night and played around with some fabrics for the car or playmat quilt that I blogged about the other day. First I seperated the blocks in my excel file. I decided to use black for the roads (I know, I know). But I didn't have any grey fabric kicking around and I do have lots of black!

I thought about using block colours, but then I spotted some yummy japanese fabric that I had in my stash and the colour scheme just seemed to work. There was a bit of cutting that needed to be done as the fabric itself is printed like a patchwork.

I will probably end up using applique to make waves over the top of the blue patchwork once it is done. I want to include every once in a while a patch that has something, such as the kids camping or the pigs at the fair.

I've started to use the happy campers jelly roll for the "houses" section of the playmat. Playing around with colours.

The one advantage of constructing a playmat like this using the block method is that you can trim as you go to ensure that all seams are even and then you can stand back and see what works or what doesn't work and re-arrange things.

It is interesting that your ideas change once you start sewing.

Patchwork Design: Playing with colours

How do you go about matching your fabric colours for your quilts?

I recently got some jelly rolls through from the Fat Quarter shop (A Breath of Avignon and Happy Campers Moda Jelly Rolls) when they had their sale. I love the idea of jelly rolls, all the hard work of matching, measuring and cutting all done by someone else.

I quickly unraveled one of them and started to play around with the strips of fabric. Weaving one after another, playing with colours and prints.

Some of the monochromatic prints in these bundles will go into Tori's Quilt.I just love the warmness of this mustard!

When I was finished playing around with the prints, I then blocked the woven strips with a nice red that was in the jelly roll and stood back to see if the combination would work.

The browns in the middle seem to be the dominant colour when I squint my eyes the greens also pop out, so the colour combinations need a bit more work. And I think I still have to put some spiders and bats in there somehow. I am hoping that I can do a few baby quilts with these jelly rolls.

How do you design your patchwork colour scheme?