Haven’t worked on a quilt in months but I’m feeling pressure to get one going – I’ll want to show in Parrsboro again next summer and I will need at least six new quilts for that (plus a bunch of smaller creations!).

It’s not that I have no fabric! I have more fabric than I will ever use but when I visited Heidi Wulfraat’s Woolworks last Thursday, I couldn’t resist picking up some Kaffe Fassett Collective fabrics.

When I came home I dug into my KFC collection and came up with several more pieces

Next I looked in the Grunge Box – lots there

TOO MANY CHOICES! I was trying to figure out how to use all of these fabrics in a single quilt top. I considered diamonds, triangles, appliquéd circles, freeform appliqué. I slept on it but woke with no idea what to do with all this fabric. I looked through my Pinterest idea collection: Modern quilts, Quilts, Diamond quilts – over the years I’ve saved lots of pictures. Nothing called out. I then looked through photos of quilts I’ve made in the past. In order to start something I decided to revisit a quilt I made in April 2014:

This quilt was based on an idea I’d found on Pinterest, Yusef’s Quilt: Ribbon Star – it seems this 9-patch block (a traditional block) is called “Ribbon Quilt Block”. The intention of this 9-patch is to use a background fabric that creates “ribbon” sections that connect colourful 4-point stars.

My next challenge was to come up with a background fabric – I chose a “cork” textured print in a pale grey to complement and contrast with the reds/pinks of the large scale prints. 

I’ve got all the prep work done. To make a 9 x 12 quilt I need 108 6″ squares – 12 are 6″ large scale prints (I’m using 2 of each print fabric), 96 are HST (half square triangles) constructed by pairing a 6 1/2″ backing square with a 6 1/2″ large print square, sewing 1/4″ beside the marked diagonal on each side, then cutting on the diagonal and trimming – creating two 6″ HST blocks. 

That’s where I am today. I’ll pick this up tomorrow and start sewing the HST. I’ll chain piece each stack; it won’t take long.