'goodnight moon' quilt

I've been faffing around with lots of different projects lately, including another old WiP

You may remember some tea towels I bought ages ago, hm-m-m way back in November 2016? {see this post} While out for a cafe coffee one day, I did a little thrifting in a nearby opshop, and found a lovely selection of tea towels. A lady had put her special collection up for sale, all Irish linen, each one with crotchet edging, and I couldn't believe my luck.

I had a little play with a few trial log cabin blocks, mixing up some bright scraps with the vintage colours of the tea towels. However, I hit a roadblock. Something wasn't gelling quite right, so this WiP got put away, and I moved onto something else, as you do.

Recently though, I re-found this little bundle of glorious teatowels. I needed to make a decision
. . . quilt? . . . or kitchen? I decided to have another little play.

I loved the look of this unquilted vintage quilt, and I was able to track down and purchase the pattern for "Goodnight Moon" by Sheena Chapman from from the berryquiltandco in Australia {see here for lots more of Sheena's creative work}.
It's a scrappy quilt with 12 identical blocks, simply turned in different directions to achieve this improv look, great for using up my scraps & some of my favourite fabrics.

I had to ammend the sizes of the components a little to make sure I was using the best of the teatowels and, unlike the pattern, I didn't deconstruct all of my log cabin blocks.

The biggest change I made this time around was deciding to use a peach/blue/teal colour palette. I think it helps create some continuity across the quilt, achieving a nice balance, something that was missing when I first started this project.

I used a real potpourri mix of fabrics, lots of quilting cottons, contemporary & vintage, and of course the linen tea towels.Those tea towels were a little bit tricky as the fabric seemed to shift easily as I sewed, and there are a few different weights with other fabrics I'd added, like the Liberties and some other unknown vintage bits I'd picked up along the way.

Once I'd made up more blocks, I laid everything out on the 'design floor' and had a little play with things. My main aim was for the tea towels to look as if they belonged & not stand out, but I hoped they would be an 'I spy' surprise when you looked more closely. 

I moved a few filler blocks around and added in a few other different ones, and checked that there was enough contrast happening using a b&w photo . . .

. . . but at the end of the day, you just have to jump in and sew. So I've been busy stitching away, determined these blocks would become a quilt, at least before another two years passes by. 

- the final border is 'decadence' by Katarina Roccella, art gallery fabrics.

Just waiting now on some more Kaffe blue spot for the inner border and then the quilt top is all finished. A perfect way to spend a quiet day... lots of fun to simply sew something simple.
And, I've got a couple of teatowels leftover to use in the kitchen too. Linking up with Lorna for 'let'sbeesocial' here at sewfreshquilts and with Kelly for 'needleandthread Thursday' here at myquiltinfatuation