I started a new quilt last night.

It's funny how finishing a big, long-term project (not that the winter quilt I just finished was all that big) inspires me to start a new project.

I'm using a bunch of fat quarters of Amy Butler fabrics that I had had sitting on the table next to my sewing machine since I bought them in January...

(I probably need to back up here for the non-sewers in the audience. In case you're not familiar with them, a fat quarter is a [roughly] 18" by 20" to 22" piece of fabric. Same area as a quarter yard (which would be 9" by 40 to 44 wide) but is more useful because it's square-ish instead of a long tangly strip. Also, lots of fabric shops have them already cut and waiting - lots of quilters like and use them - so if you're in a hurry or the shop is super busy, you can grab some fat quarters, pay, and scram, without having to wait on someone to cut fabric for you. And they're fairly cheap. And it's easy to store them. And I find they're a lot easier to work with than larger cuts of fabric - you're more likely to cut pieces accurately from a small chunk than if you're wrestling a 3-yard piece on the table.)

(And Amy Butler fabrics - the quilters in the audience probably nodded in recognition when I said that, but for those not familiar, some of her fabrics are here. [most of the ones I am using are from that line]. Mostly large-scale prints, bright "flea market" colors (pastels with a greyed chroma to them), some sort of 1960s-ish patterns, some patterns reminiscent of old decorating fabrics, some that make me think of the old cheap Indian bedspreads that my parents had left over from their college days)

I had a dozen coordinating fat quarters - not all of them Amy Butler, there are a couple of Kaffe Fassett fat quarters and a couple of "mystery" ones in similar colors and prints. My original thought was to do yet another "yellow brick road" quilt but I kind of didn't want to, as I already had one in bright colors, and this would feel like a copy of that. I tried out other ideas but I knew that because the fabrics were bright, they'd look a lot better in a simple, preferably rectilinear pattern, than in some kind of fussy block design.

Then I remembered a pattern I saw in one of my magazines and had said, oooh, I want to make that. So I found it:

antique button bazaar. I did "downsize" it - the original is for a king-sized bed, and I only wanted a small quilt, and also I didn't have the 8 yards of assorted fabrics it called for. So I found a pad of lined paper (why can I never find any of my many many pads of graph paper when I want it?) and sketched and computed and estimated amounts.

The final quilt I'm doing has four of the "bars" on it (shown in black on the original) and will be 47 1/2 by 65 - slightly smaller than twin size - when it's done. It will take almost exactly every bit of the fat quarters (no waste). And I think I have fabric that will work for a backing.

I haven't decided yet what to do the "bars" out of - my original thought was a solid chocolate brown I bought, originally for an "inner border" when I was planning something different with these fabrics. But that might be too dark and too contrasty. I also have a bigger piece of yet another Amy Butler fabric that might work. I think what I'm going to do is sew some of the little blocks together and then set them on each to see which one works better. (I also have several shades of pink and yellow solids I can try).

I'm excited by this project. I used to use almost exclusively pastels or old-looking grey-brownish reproduction 1860s fabric for quilts. But lately, I've really gotten pulled into the bright, cheerful, girly fabric lines. I don't know why. I think part of it is a lot of these things are colors and patterns I'd never wear - the quilts are totally for "private consumption," I'm pretty much the only one who will ever see them. And so I can use whatever I want. (I also wonder if my color preferences are changing; the past few years I've planted lots of zinnias and other super-bright-colored thiings instead of the more mannerly pink-and-white combinations I used to use. I wonder if it is a result of my approaching the "invisible years" that my color preferences are becoming, if not exactly loud, more pronounced and definite and not-shrinking-into-the-background).