I Get By With a Little Help From My Friends

As I'm off to the AQS show in Paducah this week, I am happy to have progressed on my Flower Ball quilt enough that it's traveling with me. My goal was to get all the papers basted with fabric for traveling, and I did it!

When I first laid out the 118 pieces, every flower center was empty. I couldn't decide what color to put in the centers. I thought of, and rejected, navy, brown, yellow, and gray before finally deciding that the task of choosing was too difficult. That's when I emailed Anne, from Play-Crafts (If you don't follow her blog, you should!) who I found in the past couple months. Let me tell you, Anne knows about color! Her "Color Chat" blog posts are so informative, and she makes what she explains very pertinent by choosing fabrics from her own stash to emphasize points she makes with a color wheel. Anyway, I thought that if anyone knew what was the "right" color for these flower centers, it would be Anne. She graciously swapped several emails, and looked at my pictures. 

In this picture are some of the color/fabric options I came up. Option one was to make flower centers yellow and orange, putting whatever color in the center that would most contrast with the flower. Option two was either a gray print or solid. Finally, it was a toss-up between the yellow/orange and the lower right gray solid. 

Gray solid won. It was the color Anne liked best, and I am easily influenced enough to agree with her. Yay for help with making a decision! I'm very grateful. Doesn't the dimension just "wow," even when it's just laid out?!

By the way, those tiny spots in the center of each piece are sticky dots with the piece number written on it, so I can keep track, by columns.

The Flower Ball looks like this now, ready to travel. I pieced a few of them together with light gray Bottomline thread, just to make sure they're gonna sew okay. They will. Hoping to get a lot done during quiet evenings in my motel room... but that might be wishful thinking.

I've also had a couple other helping hands lately.

Elizabeth at OccasionalPiece generously sent me a parcel with scraps and pieces of Kaffe fabrics leftover from her Lollypop Tree quilt project. I didn't have one Kaffe fabric in my stash, and I'm determined to get these 15" won-in-a-blog-giveaway hand appliquéd blocks made into a quilt. I had fun auditioning Elizabeth's fabrics. Every one of them will work! I'll have to get out graph paper to work up a design... or maybe EQ7 for the Mac will be available.

Susan at PatchworknPlay sent me a belated birthday/Easter and happy-whatever package from Australia. What an unexpected surprise! This little banner hung for about a week, before Easter. The package of sticky notes have already come in handy. 

And that cute Matryoshka doll? It's an unpicker! I already know I'm going to have to keep an eye on it. Last week, my stitching friends were looking at it just a little too closely... 

My bloggy, Instagram, quilty friends bless me! I'm feeling grateful, and singing along with the Beatles: "I get by with a little help from my friends." Linda