Laying Down Tracks

A musical artist doesn’t just go to the studio and sing a song. There are multiple parts to it, the various instruments, background vocals, etc. Each part is a track and you lay them altogether to create the song.

This is a great metaphor to designing the quilt for the Quilt Concert. There were so many parts to it.

First, Cassandra and I laid the first track, the layout. Cassandra designed four different layouts for the quilt. We looked at quilt size, how many components, and the overall layout.

Then was what I considered the fun part!! (well, they were all fun, but this is one of my favorites) I sat down with the newest edition of Barbara Brackman’s Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns to choose blocks. Luckily we had some ground rules on what to pick (or I would still be deciding). We were looking for blocks that had basic piecing techniquess and ones that could be divisible by six to help make the math manageable.

I was honestly surprised that we didn’t have the exact same blocks chosen! Although there were a few on Cassandra’s list that almost made mine.

From these blocks we chose our top 16. Then we decided on the scale of the block. Some blocks, such as the Fox and Geese around a Double T, were meant to be larger size. I cannot imagine trying to create that block to finish at 6″.

We also had 4 rectangle blocks to create. After looking at the other blocks chosen, we saw there were plenty of half square triangles, flying geese, and stitch and flip blocks. We utilized these basic quilt techniques to create the four rectangle blocks that appear quite seamlessly into the quilt.

Line drawings, to scale, were created and printed out, along with the layout. I used these printouts to play with where the blocks looked best. I’m learning to use programs to design, but there are moments when actual physical manipulation allows me to spend all my mental energy focusing on the design as opposed to using more than half my mental acuity on the computer part.

Coloring came next. This leaned heavily on Cassandra’s amazing ability on the use of color. She screen shared her colorized version of the quilt and we moved some colors around before deciding on the final quilt version.

Now, for the name. Quilt Concert Series #1 is NOT the name of the quilt! Bet you didn’t know that. We put our quilts together and spent time with our flimsies to see what the name should be. Kinda like when I had my kids, I needed to meet them first before I named them.

So what is the name? Well, that is a secret that will be announced in due time. So just stay tuned.

Lovingly, Lissa