I love doing Mystery Quilts, which is when you are give quantities and instructions periodically in steps but you have no idea how the quilt will actually look when its done. Mostly, you just pray for guidance and hope for the best. Sometimes you win, and sometimes you just aren't sure.
When given the quantities for the New Years Day project, which was intended to be finished in one day, I looked through my fabrics and picked a fabric that I really just wanted to use up. I looked around for bits and pieces that I thought would coordinate well but was well aware that some of the quantities were only marginally enough based on the information provided by the quilt designer.
The main fabric that I wanted to go was a bit of My Little Pony fabric that was leftover from what, I have NO idea... it had been that long. I had my pile of fabrics and considered them long and hard before beginning. I decided that I chose it and I was going to go with my gut.
Near the end of assembling the blocks, I knew I was running dangerously low on some of the fabrics... especially the bold turquoise but I forged forward and made sure I cut carefully and made no mistakes.
Not knowing how a quilt will look in the end really hampers me in trying to predict the final outcome of the fabric choices. Its all about balance but there is a learning curve in predicting balance.
The blocks were finished and the turquoise was used up and I was pretty happy with the quilt but the size was a bit small. So I tried to make it larger....
That's where I think I made my mistake: I added a border of My Little Pony on each end and then threw in a row of flying geese and another row of the Pony fabric.
I think it really needed a bit of turquoise between the geese and the Pony fabric but there was no more and I really wanted to use up the Pony stuff.
I used the striped fabric for the binding and while its not really ugly, it could be a lot better if I had used some yellow to warm it up and more turquoise because the overall color palette is cool.
It still needs to be quilted and it will get done... hopefully this summer... when its hot and I spend all day in the studio (which is no different than any other day I can sneak away for a studio day).
They say there is no ugly quilt so I suppose the beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I am sure that someday, I will meet some little girl who will think this is just the cat's meow!!
If you meet this little girl, send her my way !!!
Make someone's day !!
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