Deecee

Beautiful Losie. I have that first floral and just love it. Have only used a little of it in last year's House BOM.

All your fabric choices look great. It must be very exciting seeing it all coming together.

Fabric Galore

Deecee, I got a 10" square of that floral fabric in a fabric exchange and I thought it was beautiful. I wish I had more of it when I started my AOTH. I would have used it in other blocks. I have the top and the sides sewed onto my center square. My goal for today is to sew on the bottom squares and the narrow border. I have errands to run so, I may not get as much work done as I hope. Thanks for your kind comments.

sion

hi - you guys seem like you might be the most knowledgeable on the topic, so I'm hoping you can help. I've had a request for some custom dyed fabric to make this quilt (not the bg, just the appliques), but since it calls for scraps we're all at a bit of a loss. Can anyone offer some rough guidelines on how many colours and/or how much of each you'd want in a kit? We're probably talking about doing some multicolours, say yellow > turquoise, pink > yellow, sky > green, red > violet etc ... would half a dozen fat quarters (+ the stated yardage for borders) be enough?

Deecee

Hi sion - I'm hoping some of the other ladies can be of assistance to you. Not only have I used scraps but have also purchased pre-cut sixteenths to get as much variety as I could. I have only done a few blocks so far but like many of the other ladies, have used different colours for each block. I have some batiks with varied colour ranges in each piece and have still gone searching for more. It has become a bit of a compulsion to gather far more fabric than I will need for this project.

Lisa (lisamortell) used a specific focus fabric throughout her quilt - perhaps you could PM her.

Cre8tvlwyr

ok,Sion
the type of challenge I love!!!..... because of the composition of the blocks there will be times that you want to make 4 petals or leaves that are at least approx the same color. Even with 'scrappy' you want some cohesiveness. Due to the seam allowances, you could be talking the equivalent of up to two charm squares - that is per color or section, per block. Picture a scroll that is 3" tall by 2" at its widest - you still need a piece of fabric that is 3 1/2 x 2 1/2" and there will be waste! You might have 4 of these color-sections per block. If you have more, the pieces would also be smaller, so let's say four. This would be 8-charm squares per block. Most will use less, so consider this a maximum. You can get approx 16 [4x4] charm squares out of a fat quarter, 2 blocks at a minimum, but since some of the pieces are small, you could probably accommodate the smaller pieces for 2 more blocks out of the scraps. If you considered 4 per fat quarter, you would still need 9-FQs. But you also need to find out if the person making the quilt wants a realistic look - which would mean a bit more of the green-yellow-rust-brown family for leaves. Most of us have a tendency towards one color family, so you may want to make more of one or two of your hand-dyes than others.

Take a look at my avatar - it uses the equiv of two charm squares of green and orange hues...5x10 each and a 3x6 piece of red for the red leaves and flower centers =3charm squares total.

Six is definitely NOT enough... 9 may be a conservative estimate as well - you need at least that.
Any thoughts on this?? Good luck
Gus

Deecee

One other thing Sion - I am doing the original 7" blocks but many of the group chose to increase the block size to 10".

Fabric Galore

Sion, I have completed the 36 blocks for the quilt but I enlarged my blocks to 10 1/2". I still have to do all of the applique for the large border. You would need at least 12 fat quarters just for the quilt and then depending on the pattern you choose for the border you would need extra. This is assuming you use the same colors over and over. I used batiks to get different shades of green, pink, etc. but I also wanted different shades of purple, lavender, orange, peach. It is hard for me to imagine this quilt with all solid colors. I fancy cut some bold prints to get just the shape and color I wanted for my leaves. Some of these blocks have rather large pieces of fabric for the center of the block with smaller pieces appliqued on top of them. I don't know what method of dye process you use but you could have to allow extra for shrinkage. IMHO. Good luck.

Cre8tvlwyr

IMHO???? lingo-illiterate
GUS

it must have ?? I may have?? I maybe have overload ...hehehe!!

JudyG

IMHO=In my humble opinion.

If I were doing hand dyed fabrics for AOTH, I think I would prefer to have fat 8ths of more colors. or fat quarters that were dyed like an ombre fabric with varying shades of the same color. I know I used at least 30 or 40 different fabrics (all batiks) in my AOTH.

sion

thanks so much for all the help, guys!

the fabric we make most of is multicoloured, sort of hand-painted but with dyes. Colourwise I suppose a bit like the backgrounds on some of the bali batiks etc. We started making them specifically for people doing very realistic floral applique, so there are lots of shades and subtle blends even on the analogous pieces (say yellow-peach-pink, for eg), and often quite textural, so it's nothing like using solids. Anyway it sounds like if we did her 12 FQ + metreage for the border bits she'd have enough to go on with (esp if we throw in a handful of scraps lol).

thanks again, really appreciate the help!