autumn in the air

Cool mornings and earlier sunsets are whispering welcome news of autumn.  I've been craving warm fall colors, hot chocolate and raspberry leaf tea.  Not the blues of earlier this year or the pastel shades of my heart quilts.  This time there shall be wine red, burnt orange, goldenrod yellow and plummy purple.  Yes, purple.

I am surprised to realize that there must be purple.

After indulging in a fabric pull (which, it happens, consists mainly of Anna Maria Horner prints), I sat down with my quilting notebook to choose a design.  Often things work the other way round:  design first, fabrics second.  But, I'm just as happy to go this a-way.  With all my designs from our #30DaysofQuiltDesign challenge, I've many to choose from at the moment!

The design from day #12 won out.  It doesn't really have a name yet, because I keep thinking "diamond mine" when I try to name it.  That's also the name of one of Anna Maria Horner's fabrics that isn't even going into this quilt, so probably not the best choice.  Anyhoo, I've charted fabrics for different parts of the design from my fabric pull and think it's going to turn out smashing!

My first challenge was figuring out how to cut correctly-sized triangles for this enlarged X block.  It's kind of a stretched hourglass block, but not as straight forward to cut or sew.  Still, now that I've worked out a cutting approach, these blocks will be a cinch to churn out.  For the calculations, I took some of my own advice from my Angled ebook.  It's nice when you have such a nice record of what you've already figured out, once upon a time.

Well, there's more plummy purple and wine red are awaiting me at the cutting table.  Here's to a lovely weekend for all!