Dead Simple Quilt Along - Angela's Crazy Take on Things!

Hello all, I'm Angela and I blog over at Cut To Pieces .  I here today on Lynne's blog because she was naive enough to let me say what I'd like.  Hahaha! (insert evil voice and mustache twirl).  I've been waiting for a chance to take over her blog.  In all seriousness...well at least in only moderate silliness, I'm here to blog about my experience so far the Dead Simple Quilt Along.  Only, even with that, I'm pretty silly.  Because you see, I'm not making a quilt at all.  Too darn busy and too many quilts already!  But I loved Lynne's idea of challenging yourself to find fabrics that match a palette that you choose.  I wanted to make it even more interesting for myself and pick a palette that would a little out of my normal range (ie NOT blue and green...I'm sort of a one note wonder when it comes to putting those colors together).  So I quickly found one of my favorite non-me palettes over at Design Seeds (love that site!!).

The plums and pomegranate color in particular are a bit unusual for  me.  So I wanted to challenge myself with those but at the same time still end up with a project that I love.  Although you really can't go wrong with any of those palettes over at Design Seeds.  Gorgeous!  Instead of a quilt, I plan on making some patchwork baskets from the sweet Ayumi's pattern over at Pink Penguin.  It's just darling and I need some more organization in my life (you can never have enough you know!)

I haven't made the basket yet, so I don't have a finished product to show you.  But I wanted to share my fabric selection process with you.  Ayumi uses a neutral linen base for her basket, but I'm challenging myself right?  So I needed to mix things up a bit. ;)  So the first thing I did was pull this out of print decorator print sample.  This color blue is acting like my neutral.  I'm very comfortable with that color, so using it this way makes a lot of sense to me.

Then I started to layer on fabrics mainly from my scrap bins that fit in with the palette.  I was looking for interesting prints that "read" as a single color. Next I looked at the Pomegranate color.  I thought that this might be the trickiest to match from my stash.  I chose different scale prints with variable amounts of the pomegranate color in them.  I laid them with the main blue fabric to see the effect of the fabrics with one another.

I like some of those more than others, but a little tip...always keep a fabric in there that sort of bugs you a bit. I guarantee that it will be the one that makes your whole project stand out in the end.  It will the unexpected bit that makes your project completely unique!  Next I went to work on those plums.  I just pulled from my scraps and came up with a decent selection in the two shades.  Again, I'm looking for prints of different scale and this time in a couple of shades.  I'm still using all prints...no solids!

As you can see, I'm also able to start making the fabrics blend together a bit by selecting plums with a bit of the pomegranate color in there.  And you can start to trick your eye.  That bottom fabric on the plums is actually a purple and ORANGE fabric.  But your eye sees it as a bit more coral because that is what it is surrounded by.  And yet, it also stands out a bit...that's what we want!  Interesting....remember?  Onto the neutrals...they are the easy fillers.  And I even went with some solids to tone down all those busy prints.  And remember, I'm treating my blue like it is a neutral.

And there is my fabric selection!  There are lots of different prints, but I think it should make for some fun patchwork baskets...which are super simple...just not quilts. ;)  I have all of my supplies now, so I should get these baskets together soon.  I hope to share those when I'm done.  Thanks for having me Lynne!  And I hope you all enjoyed the method to my madness of choosing fabrics!