Bonsai Quilt

Somehow I convinced myself that I would be able to run some errands, work on a just-started-quilt, and have time to paint a scene that has been sitting in the back of my mind telling me that it's perfect for watercolors.  Well, I did run errands (exciting ones like buying a new bathmat) and that took about three hours because I had to dawdle and look at books and magazines (but didn't buy any). 

 

After lunch I began to work on the quilt.  I just stopped.  Hmm.  No painting tonight.  I'd no sooner get everything out and prepared then I would realize that I'm too tired to make painting a worthwhile or even wise activity.

 

Oh well, I am pleased with the quilt.  It's a design-as-I-go type of thing, and today I finally got things figured out.  Naturally it includes some math, and you know how much I love that!  But it's actually easy math, and the only hard part was deciding how big I wanted the largest blocks to be.  Originally I had it all planned for a 22" block (these are all finished sizes)with companion 11" blocks.  Then I thought that I'd rather make them smaller as I felt 22" x 22" was simply too big and wouldn't give me a chance to do anything interesting in the 11" blocks either since I thought that's still rather large.  So I changed the size to 16" x 16" and 8"x 8" yesterday and cut things out.

 

Of course, today I realized that one of the materials with which I am working really has to have a longer block.  Now I have the largest blocks at 24" x 16" and the rest stay put at 16" x 16" and 8"x 8".  You'll understand when I finally get to showing you the photos.

 

This quilt is an anniversary gift for D and the focal fabrics are Japanese woodcuts and an home decorator fabric we found that has bonsai tree designs.  The first one is the woodcut fabric (24" x 16" blocks) and I've managed to fussy cut it so I have different combinations of the figures shown below. 

 

The next fabric is the home decorator fabric that has four different bonsai trees that I can actually fussy cut (there are more, but sadly, they are either incomplete or can't be cut to any advantage).  This is one of the five blocks (16" x 16") that features the bonsai trees, and these blocks will be the ones with the greatest use of vibrant color.  The ginkgo leaf fabric (found in my stash!!!) will also serve as the border for the quilt.

 

And lastly are two examples of the blocks that started the whole thing.  These two are from a circles class that ME and I took from Marlous at JQ, and I am going to put them even though they are larger than the 8" x 8" blocks I want to have in the filler spots in this quilt.  Ah well, the fillers above or below these blocks will be whatever size they need to be in order for the four blocks to measure 16" x 16".

 

The great thing about being the designer is I get to make the math work whatever way I want it to.  If I want oddball sized blocks, I can make them.  Well, I do anyway no matter what quilt pattern I'm using, but this time I won't feel as though I'm taking liberties with someone else's vision.