Creative Hijacking

 I was working on my deadline quilt, really I was...then it happened...a creative hijacking.

Surely I'm not the only one this happens to, you're working on a project, and then an idea strikes that is so invasive it cannot be ignored, and you find yourself putting aside what you should be working on, and following a rabbit trail of creative thought. Yes, it's a creative hijacking.

It started out so simply. My deadline project has attic window blocks, and I used the cheater method of using a half square triangle in the corner instead of doing those mitered corners.

As usual for me, I didn't count the half square triangles, I just cut a bunch of them. I needed 80 for my deadline project, but I cut maybe 120 or so. After I finished the blocks for the deadline quilt, those extra HST's were calling to me, I LOVE playing with extra HST's. 

I made a couple of these blocks, and tried to get back to my deadline project. This is where things got out of control. I've been looking over old projects, and old plans for projects, because last year I tackled a couple languishing projects and got them into quilt tops, and I felt really great about that. I'd like to do the same this year. During a declutter, I came across the curtains I made for the grandtwins nursery. DD#3 had chosen a geisha/samurai theme for the nursery, and I found this really colorful fabric to make curtains. I kept the curtains and always wanted to make a quilt with the fabric.

 I realized that quilt block would look pretty good with the fabric I wanted to use in a quilt. The thing is, the lighter purple fabric was some Donna Dewberry crackle fabric from either the 90's or early 00's. I didn't have much left, only about 12" WOF. I had plenty of the darker purple fabric left. I made as many HST's as I could, even digging through my strip bins and finding two 3.5" strips of that lighter purple, that I cut down to 2.5". I still didn't have enough blocks to make it work. I evaluated how much of the novelty fabric I had, and I figured I could make a twin sized quilt pretty easily using it as alternating blocks, depending on what size I cut the blocks. The focus fabric is so busy, I knew I needed a divider fabric, so my first thought was to make a 1" frame for the stars in black, then cut the novelty fabric into 10.5" squares. Well, those dimensions didn't work for making a twin sized quilt. I couldn't get enough squares that large from the curtain panels to work. I could get plenty of 6.5" squares from the novelty fabric, and I could frame that instead, but I didn't want to cut the novelty fabric that small. I decided to cut the squares 8.5" and just use black sashing instead.

The thing is, I still didn't have enough star blocks. I started pulling fabrics from stash, to see what I had to make more star blocks. That's when things really ramped up and the deadline quilt was completely set aside. 

I've spent long hours sewing this week, and here's what's on the design wall.

I haven't cut the black sashing yet, though I did pull a solid black for the sashing and a black with white polka dots for the border. It looks pretty busy now, but I think the black will calm it all down and there is a lot of black in the print. 

Of course, I never counted any of the pieces as I was cutting them, so I have extra blocks, and more novelty fabric blocks. I have enough novelty print squares to make a throw, it's amazing how many 8.5" blocks I could cut when I couldn't get enough 10.5" blocks from the same amount of fabric. I'm not quite done sewing the star blocks, so I'm not sure if I'll have enough of those for the throw sized quilt. My plan is to finish the star blocks I have HST's for today, then go back to assembling my deadline quilt. Now that I can see where my hijacking went, I'm not so frantic. 

I need to get going on that attic windows deadline quilt, my granddaughter's birthday is in less than a month, and I need to mail the quilt! It's just in rows now! I still need to sew the rows to each other and get the border on, plus figure out if I have enough of the fabric I want to use for the backing. If I do, it will need to be pieced, if I don't, I'll use a purple wideback that I have in stash. If I can clear the decks from the quilt that hijacked me, I should be able to finish assembling the deadline quilt this weekend, and baste it next week. Wish me luck, and no more distractions!