Gleaned

Have you met Gleaned?  It's Carolyn Friedlander's new fabric collection, due in stores this month. I lucked out when Gotham Quilts snagged me a sample fat quarter set at market.  

I've been wanting to make a Yuma quilt, and the two will go together nicely.  In case you're unfamiliar, Yuma is a free quilt pattern you'll receive from Gotham Quilts when you sign up for their newsletter.  It's an eye-catching triangular patchwork design that goes together without any y-seams.  The 64" square Yuma quilt features large cuts and just a smattering of half square triangle blocks, so it pieces together pretty quickly.  I started mine yesterday!  

Working with a finite set of fabrics, especially fat quarters, proved tricky.  I really wanted to use the peach feathery print for the focus triangles and love how it pairs with the earthy browns and grays.  I didn't have enough of either to use them consistently throughout the quilt, so I did some fabric juggling.  Having larger fabric cuts would have been easier.  But, hey, where's the challenge in that?

Yuma has two kinds of large triangles.  I used bold warm fabrics for type A: peach, red and tawny gold.  For type B, I used dark value fabrics from the collection:  browns, grays, and dark blues.  Then I filled in the small triangles with more subtle Gleaned prints.  In the end, I'm pleased!  I think the soft greens are going to draw attention to the center peach/red section nicely. The blues along the top and bottom will become a sort of frame.

After cutting and piecing HST blocks yesterday, I'm ready to sew everything together next time I'm behind the machine.  For now I'll content myself to daydreaming about how I'll quilt this one, while washing the dishes.  I think some custom quilting is in order!  Pebbles in the background, maybe? I've never wanted to spend the time quilting those by hand.  The longarm is my ticket to all sorts of new experiences!  Maybe pebbles with something contrasting in the large triangles to help them stand out...