Been too long...here's some fluff

Hey, Mom, if you're looking for those photos I said were in the blog (and it turns out I was wrong), here they are! It seems I have been slacking on the blog lately. The pics are fairly self-explanatory, but I will elaborate a bit, for those who wonder how you get started.

I first decide which pattern quilt block to construct, generally with a color scheme in mind...or a theme of some sort. In the last couple of wall quilts, it has been animals - most specifically, dogs and cats. You find a base fabric, and then identify other complementary fabrics to fill in with.

Sometimes it does work better in the reverse - having the group of fill materials and then attempting to find that one great object material...but more often than not, you are working with a topic (main) fabric and finding the rest to support it. The most general exception is if you are constructing a scrap quilt, then there are very few rules or "restrictions" (especially when it's your imagination and colorful desires).

In the case of the first cat wall quilt, I found the first pattern I wanted to use to be too small to accomodate the cat print material - so I found a better-suited pattern to use. The colors of that material dictated the brighter primary palette for the complementary materials selected. Also, I had been looking at (and working with) the dog material on the much darker quilt for a short while, so making a brighter quilt next seemed almost necessary (to break up the color dolldrums I was suffering mentally).

Yes, I will be making a cat quilt using browns and or greys to hang with the nearly completed Dogs1 project. You can see the darker cat material in one of the photos in this set. Actually, if you click on the photo of white materials, you can see the darker cat material for the planned brown quilt in the upper right corner.

So, to date, you see the progression of the cat quilt (the first in a series) in planning and preparation, and below are a few of the first squares constructed from the many pieces cut of whites and creams and primary prints and solids. Soon, I will add a photo of the brown dog wall hanging in it's state of morphing - I began the quilting several days ago, and have a bit to do before I can begin to bind it for completion. My hope is to take it to a veteranarian's office (as a set with a cat quilt) to hang, and eventually sell. Whether the vet buys them outright, or allows me to hang them for viewing and for sale to a customer there is inconsequential. Just show me the money!