When the fabrics won't just shut up already

Last week I received in the mail a package that made me extremely happy on so many levels. It was soft, it was snuggly (What? You don't snuggle your mail?), it arrived just as I was ready for a new project, and when I opened it up, it was so much more beautiful than I ever anticipated.

It's the "Dreaming in French" collection by Art Gallery Fabrics, and anyone who knows me is looking at these and saying "Yes, the only more perfect name for this line of fabric would be 'Quilting Hottie Goes to Paris'." It is just that perfectly me. I'm a bright girl. I'm a purple girl, with a little lime and pink thrown in. I love big prints, wild patterns, and crazy color combinations that just work. I can't stand ditsy dots or bitsy bows or anything in the reproduction vein, and I break out in hives from plaids or checks. So these pretty much screamed at me "YOU MUST CUT US AND YOU MUST DO IT RIGHT NOW!"

So cut them I did on Saturday, and in between stopping every few minutes to let one of my fellow open-sew-ers touch them because they were so soft (see? cuddly.) and pass around the Art Gallery catalog, I started throwing them together in a pretty simple design that would maximize the fabric gorgeousness. Or so I thought.

Last night I gave it up and gave in to my tendency to need to make things more interesting by slashing here and there, and I am loving the result. I'll give you an extreme close up of my still fairly simple, but much more interesting design as of this morning.

Okay, so the photo doesn't look all that interesting, but trust me, if you could see the whole thing it would be much more exciting. I know I am close to pant-wetting state myself, but I can see the whole thing. You will have to wait for a bigger reveal. I'm such a tease.