All my quilt books are posted for sale. I’m pretty excited about them. I love the texture of the soft crinkly quilt with stiff hand torn pages. I’ve always loved drawing on Barry’s engineering paper(it is my favorite color–green), so I added a few pages of it to each book for quilt or knitting pattern designing.

It seems like I’ve been working on photos all day. I had to get my camera manual out so that I could figure out what has been wrong with all my pictures. Everything has been turning out too dark. Now I know all about “exposure compensation.” I’m much happier with my pictures now

Well, before our trip I got my Kona Cotton Color samples that the Denyse Schmidt suggested. (Yes, Denyse Schmidt commented on my blog. If you don’t believe me, check this out!)

So, here’s my stack of squares:

They didn’t come labeled, so I went through with the list they came with and stapled names and numbers to each of them so that when I picked my colors I would know what to order.

The colors of our road trip really inspired me. I couldn’t get over the layers of grasses–the white/yellow of the dried grass, the red and orange plumes, the fresh greens–all against the back drop of deep green trees, gray trunks, and gray blue sky. As we drove I decided I wanted a quilt that was a late summer day, and as I’ve played with my color squares I came up with this color combination:

My photos just don’t do the colors justice…

Anyway, I found these vintage reproduction fat quarters at the New England Quilt Museum which fit my color scheme.

Hopefully soon I’ll get a chance to get underway!

I got some advice yesterday from none other than Denyse Schmidt! It was very helpful advice too. I had looked at Hancock’s of Paducah, but somehow failed to access their never ending selection of Kona cotton solids.

After jumping up and down and calling my husband to tell him “DENYSE SCHMIDT MADE A COMMENT ON MY BLOG!!!” I searched the sight for “swatch” to find the swatch set Denyse suggested. I ordered the set of 5″ squares in every color–that’s 119 colors! There’s also a card with swatches of every color. I got the squares so that (hopefully) I can move them around and experiment with color combinations and find exactly what I want.

I f you don’t have to decide hands on just take a look at the yellows , reds, naturals, greens and blues.

I had also heard that Denyse was going to come out with her own line of fabrics–so I e-mailed her back and asked if it was true. Well, it is! Here’s what she said:

“Yes, I’m doing a fabric line with Free Spirit (they do the Amy Butler fabrics), and I’m very excited about it. Should be in stores next spring or early summer, I’ll have info about it on my website when we get closer to its release.”

How cool!

Anyway, she’ll be watching as we “Quilt Along.” I’m excited to get underway and I’m excited to watch what everyone else does.

I did find a place with most of the Kona cotton solids online. I’m wary of ordering fabric online before I actually see it though.

But, here are some fabrics I would love to have, even without seeing them in real life.

  

I went to a local quilt shop in search of solids and these Amy Butler prints, but no luck. In looking online it seems there isn’t any of that top fabric left either. Bummer. The colors are just perfect for my upcoming quilt!