The Big Bang Theory of "Ka-Bloom!"

If you've been keeping up around here, you know that I have finally turned this pile of fabrics

Yum. Art Gallery FTW.

into my new pattern, "Ka-Bloom!" - a modern floral explosion, if you will.

Shebang! Sheblam! Sheboom!

As always, it was a long and agonizing road, and I so appreciate you all being along for the often painfully slow ride. It's now done, available on Craftsy, and all that is left is the printing of real paper patterns. This part of the cycle is what is known in the pattern design business as "Time to dig out from the 6' deep pile of laundry and feed your family a meal not cooked in the crockpot or ordered from the pizza place for the first time in a month."

I designed this pattern mostly in my head, but with some help from EQ7, with which we all know I have a like/barely tolerate relationship. This time around I thought I would open the sketchbook to you and show you, through 10 carefully chosen images from the 32 I had to select from, how this pattern went from pile of fabric to actual quilted wonderment. I personally find the transformation kind of cool, and maybe you will too. Or not. But here we go.

#1 - You maybe saying "Gee. I thought this quilt was to be pinks and greens." You would be right. I have no idea why my very first layout was done all in peaches and blues. Add in those crazy triangle setting triangles and it is all very Santa Fe Special.

#2. It is worth noting that when I first started out, I was thinking of making a lot more blocks, but then I got real.

#3. After rejecting the first pieced setting triangles as too many points, I tried this one. Which I instantly hated.

#4. Despite the crazy clownish stripes on this, I felt like I was getting closer. And in fact, the final product does contain strip pieced setting triangles, so I give this layout credit as their birth mother.

 

#5 Then it was time to get real. I'm not about to make 10 more blocks. How can I cut this down and still make a decent sized quilt? 

#6. I may have been under the influence of cold medicine during this phase of the design process. Can you imagine actually trying to piece those sashings? Actually, I can, and that may be a project for another day. But here you can see I finally got the setting triangles figured out.

#7. If this thing is going to be big enough, I'm going to need borders. So here I started playing with them.

#8 I'd like to be able to say those pieced sashings were easy for me to figure out how to draw in EQ. But this is me. So they weren't.

#9 Will wonders never cease? I finally figured out how to get a block that actually sort of looked like the Ka-Bloom block and replace those weird snowflake things.

#10 Then all that was left was the colorization. Easier said than done, but happily it is done.

Done is good. Clean laundry is right up there, too.

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.