How I Create

Between the dull weather and black and white quilts, I felt I needed a little color in my life. The best way I could think of to do that was to start a colorful wall hanging. I thought it might be interesting to document the way I work on these little pieces.
First I grabbed a pile of the brightest fabrics I have that seem to go together.



I slice a three or four inch strip off a couple of them, not worrying if it is straight or not. It is going to be trimmed anyway. Then I insert lots of little strips of solid colors that go with the print. I try to match the colors in the pattern of the print. The strips start at half an inch to one inch wide. With the very narrow ones, I use only an eighth inch seam. I trim the sides even and slap them up on the design wall.



Sorry this is a bit blurry. I took a plain orange, because there is orange in both the prints. I added some bits of other fabrics. I started with blue for the sky, leaves, bird, flowers, foliage, green for grass and brown for soil. The orange strip was about 4 inches wide. It will end up being trimmed a lot so start wider than you need.


Trim the edges.


Sorry this one ended up sideways, but you get the idea. Separate with a solid colored strip.


Somehow, they don't seem to go together. The orange looks sort of formal and really looks better with black. The other pieces are much more playful. Suddenly, I have two wall hangings started. So problem. Just find a different middle for the bright one and different edges for the orange one.


Here are the two so far. The strips on the middle of the left one are just pinned on. The right one will need some embellishment to tie the edges to the middle.
Now you can see why this is so much fun to do!