Rainy Day Fabric Comes In Handy

Sometimes the plan and design comes before the fabric, and other times the fabric is something that catches my eye at the fabric store and I can't leave it behind.  As was the case with this bit of fabric, I just couldn't leave it behind I knew it would fit just right for some project on the horizon.  So I bought it and saved it for the proverbial 'rainy day' project.  The fat quarters that you see in this photo were presented in a pack of 5 ranging from light to dark in a variation of white, gray and black floral prints.  Alone each one of these would easily fit into many quilt projects, however I was determined to keep them together.  When I purchased these fat quarters they had displayed next to them the two additional fabrics, a bright yellow geometric design that held all the colors in my 5 shade stack as well as a floral with the same shades plus this same vibrant, bright yellow color, obviously from a designer's pattern family.

For literally months and months when I finished a project and my quilting table was empty waiting for the next I pulled these out and looked at them, moved them about on the table, imagined a design to use them in, but nothing came to mind for these.  I just couldn't find something that I wanted to use them in.  Then while scrolling around some images on the internet I stumbled across a quilt done with log cabin blocks that had various black and white fabric designs within the log cabin squares while the center square of each block was a bright red print.  The red was used just as an occasional accent, I was inspired.  I got the pile of fabrics out, my extra long pad of graph paper, colored pencils that approximated the colors that I had to work with and off I went.

Since I kept the design fairly simple this project went together extremely fast.  This photo is blurry because it was taken with my cell phone and a lot of times I don't realize it but I'm taking pictures through finger prints on the camera that is on the back of the phone.  This is about half way through the center portion of this quilt top.  Not certain you can tell from this but most of the way through I followed my quilt plan and used the map as a guide.

As I often do, I attempted to calculate my center field pattern of the quilt to fit the width of a twin sized bed.  That was the design, but I had taken a gamble that the fat quarters that I had for the shades of white through black prints were enough to finish the project.  They were literally just enough, but not without a little re-positioning of a bit of the design map I had made.  Once the quilt top was complete, before it went up onto the frame it got a dry run on Jason's bed to make sure my placement of the quilted field appeared correct.  It appears here as though the center extends beyond the mattress top boarders but when quilted it will loose an inch or two on either side.  Should fit a twin bed nicely.

 When this one came off the quilt frame I had prepared two different colors for the binding; gray and black.  I thought the gray would lighten it up a bit as there is a lot of black in this project, however the gray seemed to fade away and just wasn't bold enough.  I went with a black binding and I think it ties the fabrics together.

This project will be one of two that will be donated to the Salem Christian School spring auction this year, hopefully it will earn a good amount of money for the school.

The binding, backing and quilting.

The finished project.