Celebrate Color {Whimsy on my Wall}

Yipee!  Today I get to show you something else I made for our home, inspired by this whole Celebrate Color notion.  It started with a wall in our kitchen that used to sport a hand-me-down picture.  After the picture was knocked off for something like the 4th time, its frame broke.  Obviously a sign, right?

A sign that I should embark on my first wall quilt!

Now, what I love most in my kitchen are the patchwork rugs I made ages and ages ago with my very first fabric purchase.  There's this large one by the sink and a tiny one by the fridge. 



I decided to pull out all the stops, making the wall hanging with the same Cathedral print from Anna Maria Horner's Good Folks as the background and incorporating my new Miscellany fabrics as the focus.  Here's what it looked like at the idea stage...



Though I don't usually sketch out my projects in advance, I did this time to ward of the fear of wasting my now hard-to-find Good Folks. It's lucky that I came to sewing at the same time that the Good Folks collection was everywhere.  I fell head-over-heals in love with the entire range, which provided the kick I needed to tackle learning to sew.  I'm hoping to incorporate a new quilt with a lot of the Good Folks collection into my book too.  I guess, it's kind of sentimental to me.

Wait, where were we?

In no time at all I had finished the background and made an adorable little star block in the stripey fabric for the bottom right. Sorry, but I just lurve that star!  The scrappy little pieces kill me.  Totally indulging in my affair with black here, people!  To finish I cut the dobby dot block and star blocks with a pinking blade in my rotary cutter and appliqued them with a running stitch in pearl cotton.

That's all I had sketched but the piece looked so, so unfinished.  Up to this point I had been feeling giddy about the project, but here's when my mind hit a brick wall.  While I was at The Sewing Summit this project was sitting at home with a huge question mark hanging over it. What did it need?  




Don't you love it when you wake up the next morning with that allusive answer?  It was clear as day that I should to add a scrappy little garland a la Dottie Angel.      



Voila!  A little whimsy suits this piece quite nicely.  Brandon's sure now that I've lost my mind, but I really like it.  Yes, I do.



Added some finishing touches to this corner and then..



got set to finish my wall hanging the easy way. Brandon built this little frame for me out of 1 x 2 wood from Lowes. It's super cheap wood - even cheaper than buying a canvas. Plus, I wanted a pretty odd-sized canvas and couldn't find one that was nicely stretched.



Stretching, folding and stapling the piece is so quick and painless. I appreciate getting to skip the quilting/binding part and really like how the 1" raised edge looks hanging on the wall. I guess even my non-quilting friends will kind of know that it's meant to be on a wall, right?



They might still think I'm crazy.



The wall where it hangs in our kitchen is super dark, so this is the best I could do. It's hung higher than the old picture, so hopefully it will survive our abuse.

Here's the opposite wall in my kitchen.



I've been enjoying taking a peak at it when I walk through the kitchen to our eating and sewing area.



I hope you're finishing up some things for Celebrate Color too! I can't believe October's end is drawing so near. We're going to have some more prizes to give away soon! Oh, and speaking of that, I've been failing to reach one of last month's winners (Mama Charm) to get her last name for her prize shipment. Grace, if you're listening, please contact me!

Thanks for visiting, you all!