Checking in with my first Work-In-Progress Wednesday post.

When my friend asked me to make a quilt for her daughter’s 18th birthday I got really excited. I’ve been wanting to make a version of Tula Pink’s Fade to Pink quilt for a while and having seen this version of it, I figured I could do it almost completely from my stash. So one morning before I went to work I pulled together some fabric and sent her this photo:

The response I got was: “Am thinking vivid, but restricting colours to blue, purple, red? Any views?”

I could get excited about red, but purple and blue? And red, purple, and blue together? I countered with this suggestion of light blues and greens:

The response was: “Just make it purple and blue with a black background.”

Hmm. I was starting to have some doubts at this point. I went to the Abakhan sale hoping to find something because I don’t have much in the stash in those shades, and was looking for some sort of patterned black for the sashing and back (I really don’t like solids), which I couldn’t really find much of. I texted to tell her I was struggling with it and she said: “Oh, no. Just plain black. That way if she hates it she can just turn it over and will have a black blanket.”

I nearly cried. I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to do less than make this quilt.

I had a think about it and decided to abandon Fade to Pink. If I was going to make a Tula quilt, I wanted to at least enjoy it! I looked around and found the Loulouthi Tiles quilt at Stitched in Color, which could work with a limited palette and wouldn’t be difficult to put together (ha!). When I went to Toronto I managed to get loads of plain black cotton at Fabricland for $4 a meter (FOUR DOLLARS A METER! I’d be lucky to pay that for a fat quarter in the UK). Then I went to Sew Sisters and started taking apart their batik wall until I could come up with the right combination of blues and purples. I confess, there was some green in there, too. I was pushing the envelope on this a bit and was afraid that after all that, my friend wouldn’t like it anyway, at which point I’d be stuck with a quilt that the Germ wouldn’t even let me have in the house because its colours would be so. sad.

I managed to get the fabric cut and the top pieced in one day, and well, don’t I just LOVE IT!

All laid out. Don’t worry, the cats got to it every time I had my back turned and I had to completely reorganize it about three times.

Main panels detail. I am in flove with that purple.

The outcome certainly turned my frown upside down. These still aren’t the colours I’d naturally gravitate towards, but they work so well together and I hope the birthday girl loves it, too (her mom did–yay!).

Finished quilt top.

Since my deadline for this is early September, I’m hoping to finish this off this weekend. I had a possible epiphany about machine quilting the binding and I’m eager to try it and to report back.