Patches

I do find it fun to take some fabrics

and make something different with them. Of course, it's only marginally creative - someone else designed the fabrics and indeed the ways of putting them together. I just pick and choose the materials and mix up the different patchworky things I've seen on blogs. But it's interesting to see the effects you can get. 

The brief was for a baby boy's quilt in yellows and ochres with not too many patterned fabrics. I found myself slightly unsure what ochres are - sort of dull browny-yellows, I felt. So I looked at what I had and nothing shouted "ochre!" at me; and anyway, it didn't sound very interesting for a baby. 

So this is what I came up with. The bright yellow stars aren't really that bright - photos do sometimes lie. And I incorporated a bit of orange entirely against my better judgement because Thimbleanna had kindly given me some pretty fabrics with orange to make a future rainbowy quilt, and I had to admit they actually went quite well.  

And I made the back more interesting for a baby.

I put boy-friendly patterns on the back for the baby's big brother too, and he insists that the back is actually the front, because it's got better pictures. For that quilt, the brief was all solid blues, which I found hard. (I did sneak in tiny corners of patterned fabric even on the front. I mean, how many different blues are there?)

Ah, the happy ways of whiling one's life away and feeling a sense of kind-of-achievement.