January Color Palette Challenge

Last year I followed a blog that assigned a "monochrome quilt" challenge each month, a single color with a background color.  This year a real colorist, Vicki Welsh of Field Trips in Fiber will create a color palette for quilters (or painters, knitters, crafters!) each month.

Her January inspiration, some antique English tiles:

Vicki writes, "This is a photo that I took in the V&A Museum in September. These are tiles from an English ship made in 1882 by Architectural Pottery Company, Poole, UK."

Aren't they lovely?  My own interpretation of this color palette is inspired by a favorite Vera Bradley handbag:

I was surprised how close the colors on my bag were to the antique tiles.

I used my colors for the February Fat Quarter Fun group at Ruth's Stitchery.  Our pattern this month is by Cheryl Witt of sew-be-it in Billings, Montana.

"On the Slant" is a really fun design and it was interesting to see what colors my classmates chose.  Here is my finished top:

And a closeup.  The solids are all Kona cottons ranging from lightest blue to navy.  The border is "Japanese Chrysanthemum" by Philip Jacobs for Rowan, Westminster Fibers.

I'm amazed how well the border fabric goes with the solids. Usually I would choose the print first, then select other fabrics to go with it.  This time the border came after the top was mostly pieced.  The only thing I would do differently (always second-guessing) is to put the light yellow in the very center, so there would be less of it.

By the way, this is quilt top #10 for 2012!

Saturday Stash

Ooooh yummy.  Look what I found at freshsqueezedfabrics this week!  This is "Quilter's Linen" from Robert Kaufman.

This fabric has a wonderful texture.  It kind of reminds me of my favorite fabric from back in the 70s -- "Kettle Cloth."  The only problem?  "Quilter's Cotton" comes in -- wait for it -- 44 colors!

I've gotta go shopping!

The Farm (Wife) Report

I have a good-sized stack of Farmer's Wife blocks complete. But when I count them, there are only 48.  Which sounds like a lot -- until you realize the quilt has 111 blocks!  I spent all day yesterday catching up with my FWQAL group at High Country Quilts.  Here are the blocks I finished yesterday:

My favorite block is "Grape Basket."  I used my clever "Block Loc" tool to get perfect half-square triangles that nest together beautifully.  (Click to see post about the Block Loc.)

Oh, look, I did it twice:

Don't those points look nice. Did I do it twice just because I love this block?  Umm, no . . .

I made it twice because I had annotated the size of the square in my book at 1 1/2".  That would be finished size, not cut size.  Now my friend and fellow Farmer's Wife aficionado. Shar (retired math teacher) would have known at a glance that making four half-square triangles at 1 1/2" would not result in a 6" square finished block.  But I blithely went on sewing and it wasn't until I put this little gem on the design wall next to the other blocks that I realized -- oh.  It's only 5" square.

Won't it make a nice mug rug for our FWQAL teacher, Karen?