Neon Nights Quilt In Progress

Okay, y’all. Let’s throw another quick blog post out into the wild! You see, I’ve been working on this quilt and showing it off on Instagram. But you know, for proper record keeping, it needs to be immortalised here as well. It started back in July with this fabric pull. I was trying to create a collection that was peaking with colour, vibrancy and contrast. (Read: self-portrait.)

Unfortunately, not all of these fabrics made it into the quilt. Basically, because a few got shuffled into another fabric stack and I forgot about them! Whoopsie! Anyway, I contemplated what to make as I rummaged through my sketchbook. I stumbled across my older Mood Ring Quilt, and thought, “Hey, let’s try that again with some crazy pizzazz!” (Again, read: self-portrait).

I’m sure some of these count, right?! So I went about piecing some squares-in-squares, which is the first step in my Mood Ring Quilt tutorial. I still wasn’t sure of the final design, as I much prefer to design-on-the-fly. Hell, I wasn’t even sure if this was going to be the pattern I was making: I just needed to sew with these fabrics. I was fully prepared to throw it all out, and that bravery started leading me in some unexpected places.

The more blocks I made, and then the more of them that I cut up, the more I loved what was happening. I always knew this quilt was about the loudness of the fabric, so they really needed some pieces to shine bright. However, as I placed these fabrics on my design wall I realised that their boldness was losing impact.

That’s because there was no real place for the eyes to rest. They were constantly busy, roaming the quilt, taking it all in. Now, I didn’t necessarily mind that, but I also didn’t want to make the exact same quilt pattern again. (Even if it was my own!) To that end, I started throwing in a few pieces of Architextures crosshatch in white-on-white from Carolyn Friedlander. Then a few more, and well, a new design path appeared!

As I started figuring out where this quilt was taking me, I threw on some tunes. I defaulted to one of my faves, Dannii Minogue’s Neon Nights album. After listening (dancing, and singing) to the first few songs, I realised this music was my muse. I cranked the volume up on the speaker (and quilt) and continued to pull, place, twist and turn. I love this part of the quilt making process!

That left me was with this bold and beautiful mighty fine thang! I’ve started assembling all of those pieces, and I’ll show you where that’s taken me in a few days! This quilt has reminded me to live my life loudly!