Skill builder BOM update

If you’d like to join in or follow along, here’s the first lesson from the Pile o’ Fabric Skill Builder BOM.

One lesson down and only 23 more to go. 🙂  I really enjoyed making these two blocks.  I haven’t sandwiched and basted them yet, but I should get to that tonight.  That’s the easy part!

The first block is called Sound Wave. I love it.  I’m so glad I chose the Macaw color palette!  I always worry about how the colors and prints will mesh together but it really worked out just as I imagined it.

I’ve done plenty of improv piecing before, but Alyssa provided me with a new way of thinking about it so that was cool to try.  I followed her instructions for this block pretty much exactly so that I could understand her logic.  I have to admit, I don’t fully understand it, but everyone works in different ways and the block turned out perfectly so what does it matter?

The second block is called Magnum.  I’m not so in love with this one.  I like the block, but I’m not so happy with the fabrics I chose for it or the order of the fabrics.  I didn’t pay as close attention to the instructions before I started cutting and piecing this block and so my original plan got muddled.  Silly me!  In particular, I think dark red stripe throws everything off, so I may pick the block apart and replace just that strip.  I was trying to use different fabrics from the Soundwave block when I really should have just gone with my gut and used one of the fabrics that I WANTED to use. DUH.

If you’d like to see the other blocks that folks are working on but don’t really want to join in with the sewing, there’s a flickr group for that.

So many palettes, so little time

First thing’s first with Alyssa’s BOM, I need to pick a palette and pull some fabric.  Here, I am torn.  I would like to work with fabrics that I currently have in my stash, BUT I think I would also like to work with a palette that I’m not normally drawn to.  It would stand to reason that colors I am not normally drawn to would not be in my stash. Huh.

I was feeling pretty stumped about this, so I headed over to Design Seeds palette search and started scrolling through the seemingly endless ways of putting colors together.  In the end, I limited myself to the fowl category, thinking I would chose a peacock feather to work from.

I like this, but there’s less variation in the color than I expected. Alyssa suggested a palette of 4-5 colors with varying values. I do have a lot of blue fabrics in my stash, but I’m not sure I have enough hue variation to account for 4-5 colors.

Next, I found this palette which is very, very different from my usual:

But I wonder if it isn’t too different? My stash is pretty big, but if I don’t have enough of these colors, (my biggest worry is the coral colors) I won’t be able to do it from my stash, which is the ultimate goal.  Still, I really like this set of colors and it includes the neutral, natural color that I thought would be the perfect background.

Moving on, I found this one:

…which just might well be perfect. I could use grey as the background and build out the blues and purples and greens pretty easily.

I really should have just stuck with the one above, but I kept going (you try stopping at just one palette! That Design Seeds site is addictive!) and found this:

…and I love it too. It follows all of the the ‘rules’ I set for myself, colors I don’t normally work with, but that can be found in my stash. And there is plenty of color and variation to work with.

So I guess now the only solution is to start pulling fabrics and see how the piles measure up, eh?