Wednesday, January 8, 2014

Confused Flying Geese

I have two typical approaches to designing quilts. First requirement: it must be small, lap or crib size. I typically get burnt out on larger quilts and they lay half finished in my studio for years (there may still be one or two up there hiding in corners).  Second requirement: they involve the word "drunk" or "wonky" in the title or directions. I'm not the best at fine (or even approximate) points or squaring blocks up so if the end goal is something a little crazy then I'm in my element.

But it's a new year and I have some new goals (actually I have a LOT of goals, but more on that later). I'm going to attempt some sharp points and exact piecing. Gulp. We'll see how this goes. It's not going to be perfect. I don't need my quilts to be perfect, but I do want to challenge myself.

Enter the Confusing Flying Geese quilt. Inspired by this quilt by Lindsay Sews (take a minute and swoon a little bit). I wanted to attack a Geese quilt of my own that was a little wonky and drunk but in a different way... and it's full size.

I picked a palette to work with... I have no idea now what that palette was. I can't imagine my original plan was to have coral and orange and olive and gray and a bunch of blues??

 I pride myself in being able to visualize how things will look together in the final product. I also pride myself in coming up with combinations that others may not immediately think of but enjoy once it's in front of them. I think I missed the boat here.

I love all the individual color combinations. I'll put together a set of geese and adore it, then attach it to the rest of the quilt and wonder what the hell I have done... again.

So to start, here's the layout I'm working loosely off of (I was so darn proud of myself for coming up with a layout first!). Each block outlined in black works with the same fabrics.

Goose (ha, Goose) took a super long nap yesterday and I was able to finish the first quadrant of the quilt. I was hoping that seeing the whole quadrant together would be inspiring, but I'm feeling a little deflated. Woof.

So with a camera photo (let's be honest, all my photos are camera photos) and a little photoshop "magic" (I'm still very much learning) tried to see the greater picture and came up with this...



Yep, my photoshop skills are lacking... and the photo is blurry... and I should point out that the original block is actually square but photographed very wavy. Anyways, I don't plan to have exact repeats of the first quadrant, but do want to make sure each fabric is represented at least once in order to have some order so this gives me a general idea.

I loved the dark teal, olive and light gray (shows as white) while I was sewing it but now it really sticks out like a sore thumb. Blast. On a whole, this image gives me some hope that I can pull it off, but it's not the quilt I originally imagine! Maybe I should break up the teal/olive/gray strips into something smaller and put more concentrated color in there?

Time to clear my head and work with some different colors and fabrics...

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