Quilt and color bleed

Don't believe people who say, "I've never had color bleed and I don't prewash my fabrics!"

This was a pre-washed fabric.  I believe RJR is especially notorious for color bleed.  Sigh.  Hopefully my cool dryer didn't heat set....sigh.

RJR!!!  (Shaking fist).

I guess it's not horribly noticeable.  And this is a quilt that I take to the beach....

Revelations from my quilty hiatus

Some interesting revelations my quilty hiatus brought.


Time brings self-kindness. 
The blocks I made that I hated 10 years ago look cute to me now. It's like someone else did them.  Now, I know that if I hate it, I should save it.  Never throw it out.

Fabric lines and fabric manufacturers won't be around forever. 
 I used to love the the lines Lunn/Mrowka produced 10 years ago.  Now they do batiks...just like everyone else.  Meh.  Apparently, my other favorite, Jennifer Sampou, recently returned from her hiatus. Bottom line, if you like it, buy it.  You may never see it again.

Fabric prices exceed inflation.
If I liked it, I definitely should have bought it.  Now I can hardly afford it.

Fabric wasn't as trendy then as it is now.
"Modern fabrics?" Meh.

The traditional quilt books have seemingly all been done.
I don't see many new ones. 

The internet has exploded with quilters and everyone has a blog now.
Yayyyy.

One yard of beautiful fabric is worth 10 yards of ugly, but discounted fabric
I used to shop the sales and bought things because "they were cheap".  I have quite a bunch of goto fabrics. Those are the Benartex, Kaufman, Hoffman P&B blenders, etc.  I may have bought them on sale, but I bought few of them on "clearance". The ugly fabrics sit on the shelf.  If only I had that money back for beautiful but fewer fabrics....

My quilty trip to Planet Bulnurooo

....or....

How To Get Creative In One Step!


Step 1 : Vow to finish every quilt you start and then start a quilt that you hate.

That's it!  Fini!  You will be forced into creativity or failure! ;-).


My own creative experience

My journey to "the Planet" began with a huge pile of 2" green squares from another failed quilting experience.  I will spare you that quilt.

In the back of my mind, I've always wanted to make this.

I actually literally had enough green squares to make the whole thing.  However, I hate copying quilts from books.  And I have a penchant for bright colors (think Crayola 10-pack).  So I roughed out the quilt in Photoshop like this.....

Um, I mean, like THIS!

As I started putting blocks together, the result was sort of cute, but not very exciting.  I just didn't have the right fabrics to create what I wanted, besides that fact that it was just boring anyway.  Given that my fabric collection is larger than the GDP of certain small countries, I couldn't buy any fabric.

So, despite a slight, uh, setback in my design process, I proceeded on. The setback was caused by.....

.....Darla, who is my harshest critic and is constantly trying to "redesign" my quilts.  With the quilt above, she may have been right, but still, little missy, some diplomacy is definitely needed!.....

Caught in the act of "critiquing" another quilt.

Yes, with bullheadedness and an "I'm going to finish this, dammit (oops, family friendly) DARN IT" level of determination, I proceeded on....to the sea turtle phase.  Oh my, it really does look like an upside down sea turtle.

Still, I continued sewing and laying out the blocks (why? I don't know)....And it became nice, not so sea turtle-ish, but just so-so-soooooo orderly and unexciting...and oh soooo CENTERED.  Yick.  I was seriously considering letting my canine quilt critic have her way with it again....

....but then I thought, oh my, these fabrics are so pretty together.  I cannot throw this thing into a crumpled pile in the closet delay finishing for another time!  The colors are so gorgeous...

If only....tap, tap, tap.



So, putting on my desperation creativity cap I had a little fun.......

Without further adieu, I would like to introduce....the one, the only, the infamous Tentacle Flower from the planet Bulnurooo (or maybe it's really just a misguided bachelor's button, whatever).

 The quilt is far from perfect.  But it's an interesting conversation piece and will be fun to put together.  If nothing else, it was a creative adventure....I learned something.

Planet Bulnurooo adventure and Step 1 to creativity completed.


I may go back and make some green and off-white blocks with my leftover greens, just for fun.  They are kinda pretty in their own right...albeit a tad ho-hum after the other quilt.

Have a nice day.