purple + blue

I'm working on a new quilt! Exciting stuff. It's made entirely from thrifted fabrics so far, though I'm still not sure what I'm going to use for the backing + binding. Planning ahead is for suckers.

Seriously, I haven't even figured out what the layout of this soon-to-be quilt will be. I'm pretty sure I want to do half-triangles, though I have no idea which design I'll use. Two options are pictured, and I also have been wanting to do a pinwheel quilt for awhile now, though I may give up on the triangles entirely and just stick with squares. (But that's boring, right?) The blue flower fabric is vintage quilting fabric, I think, and the purple fabric is probably garment fabric. I only have two rather oddly-shaped remnants of the purple, so in order to get the most use out of it, I'm cutting mostly 6" squares, but also some 4" squares. Originally I intended to just cut everything out, make a bunch of half-triangle squares (there has to be a better name for that), put it all together, and hope it was at least baby-quilt sized. However, after seeing this post on 36 Shea, I'm thinking maybe I should add some white? I have a few different pieces of white fabric that I could recycle--backing for a set of drapes and fabric from a bedskirt--and it would be nice if I had the option of making this lap-quilt sized. I obviously won't be copying the design in the post exactly, as that would be so disrespectful to the anonymous woman who made it, but I'm glad I saw that post this week. When I'm designing quilts, I tend to forget that adding solid color blocks or sashing is an option. We'll see; probably I'll finish cutting out the purple + blue flower fabrics and then see how I feel.

Of course, just like I do every time I make a quilt (because I have thus far been unable to ever plan ahead, ever), I am second-guessing every decision and permanently convinced I'm going to waste all this fabric and end up with something awful. Because I'm a crazy person! Actually, no, that's not fair, I am doing far less worrying on this project, mostly because I know what to expect by now. I have pretty much decided that I really need to start choosing a design first and then choosing fabric, but I am also okay with the fact that when you're recycling thrifted fabric rather than buying it new, you have to be flexible and figure out what's possible with what you have.