Blocks for the kitty quilt

Tam requested that I share where I am on the kitty wall hanging for Finny's cancer clinic.



I am still pretty uncertain about how it is coming together. Sometimes when you are auditioning fabrics, there is a moment where the colors start to sing. That's when you know you are good to go. I haven't gotten to that point (yet) with this one.

I may pull some of the individual blocks and substitute others. (For instance, I need to move past my crush on the stars and moons background fabric in the upper lefthand corner so I can admit the color won't really work unless I add at least one other warmer blue into the mix). The hyacinth blue sashing between the blocks is also not set in stone, and the potential border fabric is so up in the air that I am not even showing it.

Part of the struggle is that I really want to get the emotional tone right. The colors need to feel calm and meditative, and avoid coming across as unthinkingly cheerful on the one hand, or brooding and dreary on the other.

Of course, it is all on hold while I work on the monkey quilt!

For Michele

We narrowed possible striped fabrics down to the two below. (The stripe in the earlier photos did not make the final two: the colors aren't quite right.)

So,

1) Which of the following stripes do you prefer? (Click for a larger view)

a) the narrower of the two stripes (a solid red on white)



b) the wider of the two stripes (a stripe with some mottling and color variation within the red)


Here is a close-up of the two stripes next to the red, for comparison

2) There are two possible fabrics we are considering for borders. In the second of the two quilt photos, you can see the starry fabric as the left border and the darker hand-dye below and on the bottom half of the right right. (If you want to see the pattern better, the starry fabric appears in the background of the close-up shot of the stripes above. The hand-dye is the fabric you see as the border of Caedmon's quilt, and in all of the quilt shots I have taken prior to today.)

Which do you prefer?

Kira's sense of beauty

"If you ever forget Finnegan, all you have to do is look at the picture"
-- Kira, on being complimented on her Finny artwork

I love her faith in the power of art. It's not just her own art, either. When she feels out of sorts, she asks Liam to play his violin for her using vibrato; and when he does, it genuinely makes her feel better. :)

Revised thoughts on aqua

I had two different aqua fabrics that I thought would work in the monkey quilt - one with swirls and one with vines.

The earlier photographs featured the swirly fabric. (It was the first one I cut, and I didn't want to complicate matters by making changes in the colors we weren't ready to play with yet!)

Initially I was planning to offer both as options, and then have Michele make the call between them. However, after handling both fabrics, I can feel that the vine fabric is of noticeably superior quality. For a wall hanging, the thickness of the fabric might not make a lot of difference, but in a baby quilt (or any other quilt that will get a lot of wear), I really want to use top quality materials.

Therefore, I would like to propose that we eliminate the swirly fabric from consideration, and go with the aqua vines instead.

Monkey business

Okay, first comparison:

1) In the following photos, you see two different options for the block in the top lefthand corner - a red striped fabric or a dark brown one.

Do you prefer:

a) A monkey quilt that includes a red striped fabric

b) A monkey quilt that includes a dark brown fabric


2) Do you like where I am going with it so far, based on the above images, or do you want to see more monkey squares?

I can do this by substituting monkeys for one of the existing blocks. So, if you would like to see more monkeys, which one other block would you like to have me remove? (ETA: You can see a few examples of this in the Comments)

Michele's decision will of course prevail in the end, but your feedback might help her make up her mind, so everyone should absolutely feel free to chime in!