Single Girl...

Well I just couldn't wait to start on my Single Girl Quilt so I started to rack my brain on how I would lay out the pieces without cutting pieces out of the fabric. When I first purchased the patter at Sew Modern in LA, I thought I would just find some fabric here and there to eventually get around to it. However, after last night's meeting, I was all inspired to get started now! Here is the pattern...

I read through most of the blogs and looked at the pictures of others doing the quilt along. There was a great idea from one quilter, wish I could remember her name, who suggested using plastic three ring binder dividers for cutting out the templates, so that is exactly what I did!

I used a fine point Sharpie and had no problems with smearing or anything. Once I cut out all the templates, I wanted to keep them divided by the four quadrants of the pattern, so I found this great little pouch at Office Max that had three separate pockets inside and one big one; perfect!

I decided to do the background of the quilt in Kona charcoal and the circles (rings) in various shades and patterns of yellow, but having purchased some of the fabric already at Sew Modern, when I got home, I wasn't feeling it all like I was before. So, while at Quiltique last night for the meeting, I decided to bring the pieces I still liked and find some complimentary colors. This is what I came up with...

Unfortunately the colors don't show up as well in this photo, but trust me, they look nice together. Originally I had bought a large piece of dark grey cardstock from Joann's to lay the fabric against for organizing which ones would go where, however, I quickly realized that the only way to get the full perspective of how it would look would require to cut a swatch or two from the material to place in the ring pattern. I didn't really feel comfortable doing this, since some of my pieces for fat quarters and I really didn't know how much I would have to play with. So, I got creative. I took a picture of each piece of fabric, and after fixing the color and cropping made tiny little pics of all my fabric. Then, I set up a Power Point slide with a dark grey background and started to arrange the tiny pics where I wanted them. Then I labeled them with the matching template letters, so I know which template went with which fabric. I am sure there was an easier way, but being new at this, I have to find some way to make this work.

Again, the colors are really off in the photo, so I laid the actual fabric next to each other to make sure it would look good. the brownish colored darker pieces are actually a dark grey background and most of the yellows are much more pale then the picture indicates. The teal fabric is not quite as "teal" as it shows here either, but it will do the job. It will be my sewing project for the next meeting.