The Color Collective

Happy New Year!  I hope everyone had an enjoyable Christmas season, and that as we move into the first weekend after New Years day you are ready for some stitching, instead of cooking and cleaning!

We do not get all Amazon crazy at Christmas. I ask for a tube of my favorite hand lotion from the drug store.  But this year I also asked for The Color Collection six month subscription from Sewtopia and Tara Faughnan

Twelve 1/2 yard cuts of Kona solids, curated by Tara.  You also get a pattern each month to download and there is a FB page and IG group for all members.  It's a fabulous value and I wanted to stretch my color confidence this year. Month 1 started with this group and the pattern Color Pop

 

This is just a test, do not adjust your color monitor, repeat, this is just a test.  I waited and waited and waited for the UPSP local office to deliver my fabric.  I guess 8 days to get a 2 day priority that looked like it had been run over a few times wasn't too bad, right?

I pulled some fabric for at test run on the pattern and process and made these 4 blocks.  They are 6" finished.

 After cutting out cardboard templates for the pattern, I remembered had a stacks of circles I had cut out when I started longarm quilting.  And I had a rotary cutter for circles.  I was in business.

I grabbed a stack of 4 1/2" strips I had pinned to my design wall, (remember, I'm still waiting for my 2 day Priority package), layered them 4 high and cut out squares and circles.

Although color seems to get all the glory, value does the good work.  Second column from left, top two blocks.  In real life, they looked good.  Very similar color and I thought it gave some interest to the piece.  Note: I think it's more challenging working with such a small finished size.  This will be 20" x 20"  

After flipping my camera to black and white, I knew this was just better, and I committed to the layout.

Here is my finished piece.  Circles are 3 1/2" and the block finished at 4"  I can see how it need tweaking if I want it to have the same look as Tara's pattern.  The backgrounds needed to be trimmed a wee bit more so the circles are almost touching.  I love this and it will be gifted once quilted.

So getting back to my 2 day Priority package, it finally arrived.  I can't wait to see all the colors in the package.  I have a *few* solids in my stash, so I was hoping some of the 12 colors would be different from what I have already.

This one came up as a close match to what I already had.  Not a surprise as my favorite colors are red and cheddar and this falls into that gold/orange/cheese colorway.   And yet, as I tell you I love red, note that there is virtually NO red in my solid bins.

The second winner was this lovely shade of fuchia.  It's on the bottom, and I had 2 that were close.

One would think with 20+ greens in their basket, surely they would have a match.  Not even close to something in my bins.

The moral of this story?  Let someone else pick your fabrics once in a while.  If you try it, you might like it.  I'm super excited to see what each month brings. January is paper piecing, and I've done a little bit of that.   I'm committing myself to work through each pattern using the colors and methods and I can tell already that I have been pushed outside my box. I think that's a good way to start a new year.  Tell me what you want to learn this year?

Keep stitching,
Sharon