A RARE Design Wall Monday with 3 little lost ladies ..

 WOW... I haven't done this is like FOREVER... but my sewing mojo attacked with a vengeance this past weekend and I made an entire double bed size top... now this was a journey... I had an idea I'd been kicking around for a while... I saw several quilts I liked on Instagram... you can visit the hashtag here for Big Patch Quilts... I like the idea of large pieces of fabric assembled in a sort of utility quilt fashion with some improv vibes but using pretty fabrics... this isn't my normal style... it is kinda boho... but I had several collections of fabric I thought would work well ... and I think it did, in the end... but it didn't end where it began... 

Okay...that was kinda cryptic... lets start at the beginning... first was the Big Patch Quilt idea which is a  pattern you can see here... I didn't purchase the pattern because I wanted to make a bigger version than the pattern had instructions for and I thought it was more of a recipe than actual dimensions which wouldn't have been applicable for me... but I do want to give credit for the idea to this maker, Hopewood Home. You can check her out here. 

Next I found this panel in my stash when I was refreshing my sewing studio...

I remember purchasing this panel at the International Quilt Festival  the only year it was held in Cincinnati Ohio... that was 2013... that was 8 years ago this month... the panel is by Cori Dantini by Blend  and the selvedge says Beauty is You... I didn't purchase any coordinating fabrics... as I vaguely recall they didn't have any to buy and I think they were just starting in the fabric business (but I may be wrong about that... the memory ain't what it use to be...LOL)  My starting point for my Big Patch/Improv  was to combine these little ladies with my leftover 10 year old  Basic Grey Curio collection from Moda and a new FQ pack from Tim Holtz called Eclectic Elements... you can see it here... I think both collections have a vintage vibe with some cool typography and ephemera images... 

So I did a little figuring and I wanted my quilt to be about 85" square... the ladies on the panel measured 22.25 inches tall ... I wanted to put one lady per row... that would give me approximately 66 inches of length... and if I added 10 inches top and bottom... 10 inches being the size of a piece of layer cake of fabric and I had a part of a Curio Layer Cake ... that would give me my 85" inches... maybe a bit more... 

And yes my math is always kinda loosey- goosey... but in this project it works fine... 

So I placed the girls on the design wall and started to add fabrics around them... some pieces sewn together and others just pinned in place,  and it looked like this when I went to bed on Friday night...

And yes to a lot of you and even me it is a big mish mash... but I'm diggin it... I know it is busy busy busy quilt... and I figured it would be ... I have a love of busy busy busy quilts,  but I just wasn't totally happy with it... and I know that lots of scrappy projects for me start out where I love the project... and then it slides into doubt... and moves on to meh...and dives into ugh... before it is resurrected into like and then finally I get back to love... I know I need to give it time and stay with it. Now sometimes this process takes days, weeks, months, years... but in this case it took one night's rest... 

When I got up Saturday I knew that as much as I loved the little ladies they had to go... I know this sounds strange but I didn't think they weren't  busy enough... OMG... I know you are shaking your head... not busy enough???  To my eye they jumped out ... but not in a good way... so I took them out and replaced them with more busy busy busy fabrics and now I LOVE it!!

I know it is a crazy jumble ... I like to think of it as boho eclectic ... it makes me happy and that is the only person I have to please.  I'm going to have it quilted and it will look great on my bed!  I even get a bit of a 70's vibe from it... when I was young...and stupid... and happy!!

Here's a couple of close ups of some  of the fabrics... it goes without saying I LOVE the Basic Grey Curio fabrics but I'm also in LOVE with this collection from Tim Holtz ... this is the second time I've bought the same package of FQs and I have enough left for another smaller quilt. 

I think I'll put the little  ladies on the back of the quilt... I know I'm going to have to piece it to get the back big enough so this will kill two birds with one stone... I want to pull together a scrappy binding before I put the leftovers away... and I can't wait to send this off to the long arm quilter...

 I know this isn't everyone's cup of tea but I it has the utility/improv vibe I was going for... I'm usually a make a bunch of blocks kinda quilt maker and this was different for me ... I like how it shows off big chunks of fabric ... and overall it was a pretty quick quilt to make... I may even do it again someday... 

But for today I'll link up with Small Quilts and Doll Quilts, and Quilting is More Fun Than Housework and Love Laugh Quilt... maybe I'll get back into this Design Wall Monday again... I have at least a half dozen quilt ideas kicking around in my head  ... I hope that this quickly finished project will spur my sewing mojo... fingers crossed...

happy stitching-

carol fun