If there is a way to make it more complicated...on Design Wall Monday

If there is a way to make a pattern more complicated I will find it. Not because I like to do things the hard way, but I get these ideas and the wheels in my head start spinning and I end up going down a road I hadn't expected. This quilt is one of those roads.

The pattern I'm using is called Helix - you can see it here. Okay, so somehow this pattern triggered an image in my mind of a scene from "The Wizard of Oz", a scene that the more I think about it, may only exist in my mind, but anyway, that gave me the idea that the spiral had to be yellow. Now you are probably asking yourself, "Carol, do you really need to reach that far for a reason to make a quilt yellow? And the simple answer is, "No." but this is how I get myself into these situations. So off I went looking for  yellow fabric for this quilt. Now I didn't have anything in particular in mind, I just thought it should be yellow, but I was strolling around Hobby Lobby the other day and there is was... for 30% off ... YELLOW BRICK ROAD fabric!! It was as sign from above, it was meant to be, and it immediately ended up in my cart.

While this choice of fabric was a stroke of design genius (if I say so myself, and I do) it triggered the OCD in me, in that I wanted the bricks to all go in the same direction - that is the bricks should all have their longest side in the horizontal direction- and that's where the complicated started. Every piece of the spiral is a different dimension, and the pieces on the outside are quite long, and I didn't want to have to piece the longer pieces if I didn't have to, soooo in the end it took all of Sunday afternoon  to figure how to cut it out. I ended up having to splice together 2 pieces where the bricks were running horizontally and the dimensions were more than the width of the fabric, so not too bad.

Next I moved onto the section where the pattern made strip sets. Again strip sets would be fast and easy so of course I had to complicate it by choosing to use bits and bobs of my novelties and brights. As you can see from the picture below I started with a polka dot chicken fabric... you saw that coming didn't you?

This will of course take way longer to do and make a spectacular technicolor mess in my sewing room but oh it is going to be fun! I'm already searching my stash for special fabrics I want to include...besides the chickens...there is a fabric with pizza, and one little fried eggs, and one with pigs dressed up like ballerinas, and one with Elvis, and well you get the idea. LOL!

Happy stitching-
carol fun