TST #22 - My Milky Way

In 2005 at a Mary Ellen Hopkins II class hosted by Di-Versity Quilting in Pritchard, British Columbia I had the opportunity plan the colour placement in a quilt.  I had brought along a large number of fabrics with an autumn feel.  When I asked Dianne the instructor which ones I should use, she suggested all of them; “Make it scrappy”.

I drew out the plan on graph paper, apart the fabrics, sewed them back together; mounted them on a flannel board and didn’t like the result.  One of the students said it would work; I just had to let it percolate for a while. I felt I had wasted some very pretty fabric and there was no rescuing the project.  Dianne assured me that if I just took the pieces home, and left them on my design wall they would eventually "reveal themselves" to me .

The patches sat on my design wall for several weeks.  Each time I looked up, I would move some of the patches around.  Then…EUREKA…it finally clicked; with some minor adjustments it started to take shape.  I sewed additional patches and decided that the quilt was becoming too square.  Using the left over four patches, I added borders to two sides.

You can see from the picture the end result.  The quilt was donated to Hawthorne Lodge, a seniors’ center in Port Coquitlam, B.C.