Yesterday was a treat. The sun was shining, Elora was playing happily with a neighborhood friend, and I was able to spend loads of time in my sewing room. My goal? To start on Collaboration, a spin-off quilt for Positivities club.

And what a great, leaping start it became! First, I sketched the design, which came to shape quite easily and playfully. Look closely and you can see that I drew two different corner designs (compare bottom left corner with bottom right corner). My favorite version is the right side version. Those heart-like shapes happened quite on accident, and I love them!

Next I identified dark, medium and low value elements in the design and labeled them alphabetically on the sketch. I already had a fabric stack ready, with purples, greens and blues. I added low volume fabrics to my mix and organized them in stacks by value. My medium value prints are at far left. Dark is above and low value is at far right. That purple moth print is on the fence between medium and dark value, so it could be wise to exclude it, but I really want that shade of cool purple for my project. So, in it goes.

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The next step was to choose fabrics for each element of the design. Typically I don’t choose fabrics for my whole quilt in advance, but this one calls for more planning due to the intense fabric repetition. Fingers crossed that I have enough of the fabrics for my needs! Above I have arranged the fabrics in approximate order. The tiny green print at far left is the quilt center and the successive prints will appear as rings around quilt center.

Look, I’ve already started cutting and arranging elements on my design wall! That was a great start indeed. I think I will even get to add to it again today. Yay! Being creative is such a pleasant way to spend the day.