Resolutions?

It's the first Saturday of January 2012, the year is already a week old.  And a busy week it has been.  My son and one other person told me they had started a project for the whole year.  One of those "I am going to do this activity everyday of this year" kind of projects.  Some of the bloggers I follow have also listed things they are going to do everyday this year. My son's choice was to draw a cartoon everyday, a friend is writing in her blog everyday, others are sewing something new each day, another is taking a photo everyday.  You may have something you have committed to do every day too.

I promise you I will not write in my blog everyday, but I think I should step it up and write at least every week. Maybe if I take at least a photo a day, the blog will be easier because I will have things to show.  Right now I have lots of ideas that I want to work on and several are quilts.

My current project is a quilt that I was inspired to make because of the intensity and variety of the fall colors this year. It will have more colors in it than I would have used on any traditional quilt, but I think they will work.  Normal  fall colors in Colorado are usually bright yellow aspen or cottonwood leaves contrasted with the dark blue-green of the blue spruce trees, like you can see in the first photo below.  Here are some examples of my inspiration for the quilt.

Blue Spruce behind a cottonwood.

An Ash tree in the park. 

Cottonwoods, aspens, weeping willow and others in various colors.

 The fall colors I am using in my quilt are helping me through the cold days of winter. Here they are before I cut them up. I still have a few blocks to sew before I can start sewing them together.  

In the bottom photo you can see part of the pattern I selected. I really like the hexagons in the grandmother's flower garden quilt but I wanted to work with larger pieces so I chose a 4-inch 60-degree diamond.  When three are sewn together it forms a hexagon and resembles the tumbling blocks pieces. This quilt will not follow the same rules with the light and dark shading as a tumbling blocks quilt would. I decided each tree will be represented by one block of three diamonds. No two blocks are exactly the same in the whole quilt.   I am not sure how that will work when I start sewing the blocks together.    

This quilt will look more like the fall tree colors in the Midwest, where each tree is beside another kind of tree and the colors look like paint splashed across the hills.  I will post more on it as it advances. I plan to give it a green border with a few appliques to represent leaves tumbling along. I may have to call this one "Tumbling Leaves".