New Project: "Bars and Stripes"

You know how it is...deep down you have a quilt forming that finally has to come out and see the light of day.
I've been thinking a lot about cottons, ever since I made that class sample last spring. I love cottons!

So I decided to make an actual bed quilt out of cotton (mostly; a few silks just have to sneak in there) in a combination of crazy and sane quilting techniques. There will be bars of crazy piecing alternated with bars of striped cotton fabric which will no doubt end with applique on them.

I got started today.....

As always, I begin with the "blanks" of foundation fabric on the design wall. Here they are placed between the striped fabric bars.
I'm not sure if I'll keep those striped fabrics or not...but I've been saving that Kaye England border print in the center for years and really do want to use it.

It is more or less determining the color scheme of the quilt (though gosh it looks washed up in this picture. The background is actually much more yellow.)

I pulled my fabrics and the scene below is the harbinger of the tornado that will soon be my sewing room.

Ahhh....I do love this part.

Then I just jumped in and started piecing. I'm thinking there will be lighter valued pieced bars in the center, darker toward either side. So I started with the softer, lighter colors.

I really do want to emphasize more of a flat surface in this quilt, in a departure from the 3-D work I've been doing for quite some time now. I don't know why! So I am keeping the texture in the fabrics to a minimum.
This will have very basic seam embroidery....

...and maybe even some machine quilting in the striped bar areas.
I have to psyche up for that though. You know how I feel about machine quilting. Yuck!
(I'll think about it tomorrow, at Tara.....)

But meanwhile I have some happy days of piecing ahead of me... ;-)