I ended up adding 7 more fabrics for a total of 48 fabrics and one more brick to each of the horizontal rows so now it will be 72" wide. Remember when I said I was going to make more smaller quilts because I already had too many large ones? Well, I blew it. It will be 93" long if I stop with a full brick row and 96" if I end with a row starting with half bricks, to be determined later.
I still have this many fabrics left after cutting for this quilt. Most of these are at least a quarter yard and some are over a yard.
The art quilters were supposed to come Monday but there is snow predicted starting Sunday night and lasting into Monday morning so I cancelled. I have emailed them and am waiting to hear back for when they want to reschedule.
I cut 10 more fabrics into the brick shape and added one more brick to the width of the rows. Now it should end up at about 66" x 84". I have enough bricks cut to add 2 more rows to the length which would make it 90" in length. I have to decide now whether all of the squares to fill in the ends of every other row will all be the same fabric or be a variety. I'm happy with the assortment of fabrics now that I added the last 10. I think there is a better balance of values than there were in yesterday's photo.
I cut 8 bricks from each of 31 neutral fabrics and started playing with a layout with 2 of each.
I'm thinking I need to add more variety and found these 2 fabrics last night that I will cut today.
This is one batik that was in the 16 patch that I didn't cut for this quilt. I have 1 7/8 yards of it so it is a potential back for the 16 patch quilt. I haven't decided if I should use if for that or just keep cutting it up. It is darker than it looks here.
You can see it here in the top right block and the bottom left block. This is truer in color than the photo above.
I have decided the next neutral quilt will be bricks and I will use these dies to cut the pieces. The brick is a finished 3" x 6" size and I will need 3" finished squares for the beginnings and ends of every other row. I may come up with one more quilt to cut at the same time.
When I made the 16 patch quilt top I was working mostly with 2.5" strips that I had already cut over the years. Now I am thinking about a second neutral quilt so I needed to go through yardage and see how many I could find.
I kept finding more and think I ended up with about 38. In the 16 patch quilt I have 47 different fabrics. One was used twice. This is a daylight photo so the colors are a little washed out. They are deeper tones than they appear here. Now I have to decide what block I want to make.
The neutral 16 patch top is sewn and is about 48" x 64". I think this photo shows the colors the best of all of the photos I have taken so far.
You can see how the camera wants to wash out the colors with a straight on view. Probably something half way between these 2 photos is what it looks like in daylight.
You can see there is a lot of color in some of the fabrics too.
This is one of my favorite blocks.
While I was at it I knitted a neutral dishcloth too from 3 partial balls of yarn.
I decided on 48 blocks and completed the last batch last night. Here they are with the 2 blocks in it with the gold checked fabric that I wasn't sure about.
And here it is with those two blocks replaced. This is more of the look I was after. There is one combination with a muted purple, several with dull greens and at least one with blue in it. The rest are neutrals.
This is the view from my sewing machine in the main floor studio.
I sewed all of the vertical seams and 5 of the cross seams after I took this photo. I will finish it today.
I have been busy at my die cutter for several hours each day. I hate to throw away these scraps that are about 1/4" wide and anywhere from 2.5" to 8" long but I don't do any art projects or weaving to use them.
My pink and white cactus had two buds and one finally opened.
