I absolutely love Blackbird Designs and everything they do with fabrics and books. The quilt I've just started is called "Winter Garden" and is from their book called "When The Cold Wind Blows". Barb Adams and Alma Allen are the two ladies of BD and they are exceptional designers, to put it mildly.
This quilt will be large, a king size. The blocks are huge, 28" x 28" each, and there are only going to be 9 of them laid out in a 3 x 3 layout. Theirs didn't have a border, but I'm going to add one (more about that in a moment). The blocks are each similar, but different. Eight of them are all a vase of some kind of flora, while the center block is similar but circular in design with no vase. The color scheme is muted tones as you see in my first block below, i.e., the "Winter Garden" and how are gardens look when winter has come and sent its chill over everything - golds, browns, neutrals, deep purples, etc.
Now, about that border - another quilt in the book has a border of winding branches on it with blue birds sitting on them. I plan to use that same pattern for the border on this one, but will do it with a gold colored background (to make it stand out from the neutral background of the top) and the birds will all be done in various blacks that I have, since the only birds we see here in Arkansas in the winters are blackbirds. And after all, this design is by Blackbird Designs. :) I'm loving this quilt already, it's going to be a lot of fun to do. More to come as I roll along.
Edit: I forgot to mention the fabrics. Most of them are from the Harvest Home collection by Blackbird Designs, although I'm mixing in some others. That background fabric is one that I'm really crazy about - it's called Mayfair by Benartex. I had 5 yards already in my stash and when I pulled it out for this project, I was so taken with it that I went online and ordered 10 more yards of it! It will be showing up again in other quilts!
"Winter Rose" block - 28" x 28"
[ATTACH=CONFIG]263851[/ATTACH]
Detail of "Winter Rose" block
[ATTACH=CONFIG]263852[/ATTACH]
