fun discovery -- Ricky, I owe you a huge thank you!!

[Margo C.]

So, my husband is going to be traveling a lot for work, and I'm making him a quilt to leave in his "home away from home" so he can still sleep under something I made even while away from home. I asked him for design ideas, and he searched on-line images and found a pretty basic stacked bricks type quilt. Okay, easy-peasy. Then he said he wanted it to "fade from blue to red." Ummm.....okay.

I sketched out the color wheel and was a little horrified at all that purple; how to make a masculine quilt that starts with blue, ends with red, and covers the colors in between???? I decided to start from a light blue and go to a red orange, and kind of focus more on navy/burgundy, with just one "purple" in the middle.

Headed off to a little quilt shop near my sister's house, and started by looking for a "masculine purple" upon which the rest of the quilt would be based/built around. This fabric is the key to the whole quilt, and I nearly despaired of ever finding one; everything was too purple, or too girly, or both.

Finally, after nearly giving up, I stumbled on this gem that was a sort of blue overlaying red. Awesome!!! You can see it in the middle of this photo (along with the other fabrics to complete the quilt). (it's the 4th fabric, from either top or bottom)




Well, I finally began the starch/iron/cut process today and lo & behold, that key fabric? the one that makes the entire thing work, without which there simply would not be a quilt??? It's none other than Ricky Tim's Rhapsody Colorie for Red Rooster Fabrics!!!

So, a giant, huge, tremendous THANK YOU, RICKY!!!! for designing exactly the fabric I would need :mrgreen: I'm sure this was your intent all along when you made that fabric, right? :roflol:

Off to start cutting & piecing; going improv on this one....wish me luck!

[Renata L.]

Hurry up and make the quilt, Heather, want to see it! Are your bricks going to be horizontal, vertical or diagonal? Great choice of fabrics--they all go well together.

[Renata L.]

Hurry up and make the quilt, Heather, want to see it! Are your bricks going to be horizontal, vertical or diagonal? Great choice of fabrics--they all go well together.

well, I'm going to improv it. The colors will fade from left to right, with the light blue on the left, the red-orange on the right. So, same color bricks will be stacked vertically....let me see if I can explain, LOL! I'm cutting each fabric in 5.5" strips (ummm, across the width of fabric). Then, some of the strips I'll cut into one 2.5" section and one 3" section. Then I'll cut them into random lengths, mixing short with long so that the brick stacks (of each color) are staggered and kind of interlock with one another (ie, so it's not just a straight stack). Then I will *probably* join the strips on the diagonal as I go across the horizontal row (doing the method where you put the top strip vertical, the bottom horizontal, sew on the diagonal, trim away the little triangles underneath).

It will probably end up having a border, a color-change chain in a gray background. I haven't bought the gray yet; that will be for the back and the border. Then the color-change part will be to fit on the top of a full sized bed, but the border won't be wide enough to be a true full size quilt, 'cause once he's done traveling it will be a couch quilt. Just a really large one, LOL!

I'm going to cut today and hopefully start sewing this weekend. I think the top, at least the center, will come together quickly.....just have to find time between all my other duties. Every time I have a project like this to work on I momentarily rethink my decision to homeschool my kids, LOL! boy does that interfere with my sewing time! :lol:

[Renata L.]

oh, and thanks! You should have seen me wandering that LQS, carrying around one bolt of fabric after another while I chose the next bit. Once I found the purple/Ricky Tims, I carried it around to find the next blue. Then carried that around to find the medium blue, then carried *that* around to find the light blue. Then started over with the purple to go find the purply-red, and so on. Then I laid them all on a table to make sure they flowed into each other well. I am sure the shop owner thought I was a little bit crazy!

[Renata L.]

Look forward to seeing it.

[Renata L.]

4 pages of math later, and I think I'm a failure at improv, LOL!

Measured the bed to see how big that center section needs to be. Drew a sketch. Figured how much divided by 7 colors is. Figured lots of different ways to get that total, while still having 7 colors, but varying the lengths. Then figured how many of those length cuts I can get from the strips I cut from each yard of fabric (I have 1 yd of each color). Then just wrote up a cutting chart, so I know what to cut from each of the strips of each color (have already cut the 5.5" wide strips, but not cut those into their varying lengths yet).

Will let the "improv" portion come in when I decide which finished row goes where, as the math to get the rows all the right end-width is done. Or length. Or whatever. Left-to-rightness.

Off to cut, and happy to report I end with extra strips of each, so plenty to do the chain border he wants. Won't that be fun......Not varying the widths of the strips, though; will tweak my length a little too much. I think.

[Deborah W.]

Make sure you post pictures. Sounds wonderful.

[Deborah W.]

Ummm Heather--improv doesn't usually have this much thought and math in it. :lol:

[Ricky T.]

Ha ha - yes indeed - that WAS my plan all along - I just knew you would need that particular fabric!!! Whoo-hoo!! - Ricky

[Ricky T.]

Ummm Heather--improv doesn't usually have this much thought and math in it. :lol:

yea, I am *definitely* an improv flunky, LOL!

BUT, I got all the fabric cut into strips, all the strips cut into their assorted lengths, and all the assorted lengths paired/sorted into their assigned "rows" for the quilt.

Will "improv" the arrangement of the rows

The problem/reason was that I needed the "middle/top" (ie, the part on the bed) to actually fit on the bed, so that all 7 colors are visible on the top of the bed. Then there will be a border around it for the overhangy parts. Soooo.......the bed is 56" wide, 7 colors, so I spent 2 pages figuring out all the combos of numbers that made 7 stripes but still ended up as 56" wide. LOL!!! And then another page figuring out how much of each of that size I could cut from one yard of fabric, and then a page figuring out how many, then, of each color I needed in each size.....yea, definitely flunked out of improv on this one!!

But it's ready to go!!! Start sewing tomorrow

[Ricky T.]

Ha ha - yes indeed - that WAS my plan all along - I just knew you would need that particular fabric!!! Whoo-hoo!! - Ricky

I thought so You just strike me as that kind of nice & thoughtful. Of course my sweet DH has no clue what that means, "Oh! did you know your fabric, the main one, is a Ricky Tims' fabric?! Isn't that cool?!" "oh...wow....yea, that's neat....." At least he played along when I told him.

[karen f.]

Heather that fabric is perfect! I can't wait to see the quilt.

[karen f.]

Heather, I too am a improv flunky. I just do so much better at organized.

[karen f.]

Sounds neat to me, can't wait to see!

BarbCA

[Caroline A.]

When I try to make a scrap quilt, my quilting friend just laughs and calls it planned scraps!