With all my strip pairs sewn it was time to turn them into strip blocks. My overall goal was to get a really random spread of the rainbow colours all over the quilt, with out it being overly calculated.

I sorted the colours into groups of dark warms (purples/reds), dark cools (greens/blues/greys) and brights (yellows/oranges/pinks) and then grabbed one from each group for the sets. The dark cools seemed to out number the other groups so I had to swap a few of those in towards the end but it was the first of many exercises in not over thinking things.

A few of the combos really stuck out to me. The worst was a royal blue/gold/dark purple set that screamed school uniforms and football jerseys. The best was a complete accident and I didn’t realise until I was ironing but the colours (navy blue, canary yellow and bright teal green) alternating with white almost exactly match a dress I bought earlier in the year. Not at all the colours I’d usually wear but the set just confirmed how much I like them together.

All the strip blocks were sewn together, and then sliced up again (are you serious!? but I just… ok fine) and arranged into pretty little piles. Once again I had to practice turning my brain off and just grab different strips from different piles while having flashbacks to maths classes on permutations and combinations.

First they were joined back into reasonable size blocks, then laid out on my “design floor” in the order they were made, with the minimum amount of swaps to avoid big clumps of the same colour. A couple black & white snaps to check for value balance, another swap, then back to the sewing machine to sew blocks into rows and rows into… my first quilt top! Ta Da!

In the lead up to Christmas 2010 I decided I wanted my own sewing machine. I started shopping around and I had a pretty clear idea of what I wanted to be able to do with it, mostly making or altering clothes and costume pieces. The lovely woman at my local sewing machine store was really helpful showing me the different machines and asking what kind of sewing I was planning to do, to help me find the right machine. When she asked if I was planning on doing any quilting I almost laughed, I thought “no way!”, but I didn’t want to offend her so just said “not really at the moment”.

It only took about 12 months before I got sucked in by all pretty fabrics that I didn’t think I could pull off wearing, and the appeal of sewing straight lines on flat pieces of fabric – though here’s a secret, it’s harder than it looks! A few of the sewing bloggers I follow had worked on a quilt at some point or another, I followed some of their links, found more quilts, followed more links… you know how that ends. I discovered the Modern Quilting movement and quilts I not only really liked, but thought I might actually be able to attempt myself.

The next Christmas rolled around, I asked for some cotton fabrics and a couple of books. One of those was The Practical Guide to Patchwork: New Basics for the Modern Quiltmaker by Elizabeth Hartman. I read the whole book cover to cover and then went back and picked out the Snapshots quilt as the one I’d like to try first. Elizabeth’s version is basically a checker board pattern alternating white squares with a range of white prints on black, and a pieced back that introduces a splash of colour.

One of the things I love about this book is that for each project there are examples of alternate ideas for fabrics to use, and a list a fabric options including precuts or the amounts required for a different number of fabrics. It’s a gorgeous quilt as is and one day I might go back and make it in those fabrics but I wanted something brighter and a little more exciting for my first quilt, and including those options felt like I’d been given permission to change it a little and do it my own way. So that’s exactly what I’m doing, next post I’ll show you what fabrics I chose and the first steps to making my first quilt!