Journal 15

“What Shade Are You?” Flying Geese Quilt

I could not believe it when RJR Fabrics emailed me about participating in their Cotton Supreme Solids block hop. No one had ever asked me to participate in their blog hop, so I was very excited!

When I received the color card in the mail I was blown away by just how many color choices they had to offer. I don’t normally work with strictly solids so I had no idea what to make or what colors to choose. I decided to pull a color palette with greens, blues, red, pink and mustard as my color inspiration! I chose 15 colors (including 5 background colors):
Tickled Pink
Caviar
Anemone
Carolina
Proud as a Peacock
Kelly Green
Sprout
Peridot
Golden Topaz
Bandana
Greyhound
Burlap
Linen White
Kona Coffee
Sand Dune

Wow when the fabrics arrived I could not get over the vibrant hues and how soft and how much body they had.

I knew whatever I decided to make, I couldn’t just use solids, I had to toss in a few Cotton and Steel Black & white prints (obviously). Here are the prints I used:
Bear hug metallic
Flock metallic
Hoos there
2.5″ Gingham Black
Petite Plus
Sprinkle Black Cat
I wanted to create a unique pattern with improv and modern piecing. While I was way outside my comfort zone, why not draft a large paper piecing quilt pattern… So, I created my own flying geese pattern that graduated in size from 12″ wide to 1/2″ wide geese. For the centers of the flying geese I pieced together slivers of solids and B&W fabrics creating fabric to cut from.

For the background I used a graduation of neutrals from light to dark.

To give the quilt a modern feel I left a bunch of negative space in the background.

For the backing I pieced together leftover colored solids, Cotton and Steel B&Ws, and background fabrics.

Since there was a ton of negative space, why not play around with graffiti quilting to enhance the body of the fabrics and the texture of the quilting? To continue with the modern/improv feel I quilted using Aurifil 50wt thread in a variety of colors that coordinated with the Cotton Supreme Solids.