The next applique project

It's a real bummer to be in a situation where the only sewing that I could do is hand sewing and I just finished my last epic hand sewing project! Instead I've been spending my time planing the next TWO hand sewing project. I will not be caught empty handed again. My first project is almost ready to go.

The first step in planning the new project was to take inventory of what's left from the last one and there's a lot of inventory!
​ I have 10 appliqued blocks left over from the finished quilt.

Plus 30 more multi-colored flowers still to be appliqued!

But that's not all! There are 54 flowers in blue!

AND dozens of loose petals!
Can you imagine one person basting all of these? There's enough here for at least 3 more large quilts and I'm pretty sure that I gave a whole set of flowers to a friend a few years ago. I wonder if this person ever made a quilt the themselves from all of this work? They had to have had access to some sort of dress factory because the variety of prints is astounding. In the quilt that I finished there were no duplicate fabrics in the large flowers. I'm pretty sure the blue set that I have also contains no duplicates. 
Amazing! And I only paid $15 for the whole lot.

I felt that I had 3 choices here. I could continue with more multi flowers on white fabric and stitched in black. Or I could do a project with the blue flowers or maybe a strippie quilt with rows of vines and petals/leaves.

 Becky was over visiting the day I was pondering what to do so I consulted with her and we decided to do the blue ones and to do them on pastel colors instead of white for a change of pace. After all I have over 1000 yards of white fabric. Why would I want to use that?
​We thought about 3 or 4 pastel colors that would read the same value and to use a bigger block size. A bigger block size could eliminate the need for sashing and also give me more quilting space. I considered dyeing some fabric but decided that solids would be more in keeping with the time period of these prints. So I was off to the fabric store for the first time in AGES.

I picked up Mom and we headed off to a fabric store near her apartment. I can take her fabric shopping because she would NEVER say "you don't really need more fabric". At the first fabric store we found this light pink and vanilla. They are very pale and read as the same value. Although I generally hate pink I think these are perfect background colors for these blocks. I couldn't find any other colors to go with these but there are other fabric stores to check out.

This fabric, by the way, is Michael Miller's Cotton Couture and it is fabulous! It's very soft and has a lovely sheen. I know that Kona is all the rage but I used it once and it was way too "ravelly" for me. This project is going to be around for a long time and the blocks will be handled a lot. Kona would just make me mad every time I touched it. I think the Michael Miller fabric will be a joy to work with.

We also picked out this gold and red for the centers of the flowers and several different blue floss samples so I could decided in a color for the stitching. A few days later Marcy came over and we picked DMC 791 for the stitching thread and decided that the red and gold might be a little too bold.

Yesterday Mom and I headed off to another store to see if they had more fabric options. The second store has loads of Michael Miller!

While there were lots more colors of the Michael Miller fabric there weren't any other pastels that I liked and we decided to stick with the pink and vanilla. I did find a better yellow and a pretty green to use with the red for centers. The gold will get filed in the stash for another project. I bought all of their 791 DMC floss, then went to an AC Moore and bought all of theirs then back to the first fabric shop to get more of the pink and vanilla. I probably have enough fabric for 2 quilts and that's about perfect for a quilt with no actual plan. No matter when I finish this I should have enough fabric to do whatever I want with it. I also have 25 skeins of floss and that should be plenty too!

Next I need to get the fabrics washed, some blocks cut and fuse on some flowers so I can start stitching. I might even ask Marcy or Becky to help me with some cutting so I can start stitching soon. I'm pretty sure I could do a little stitching while my arm heals.

Then there's also the second applique project and I dyed fabric for that yesterday. It will be ready to cut next week.

I haven't been as wise about my arm the past 2 days as I should and I'm going to do my best to be better this weekend.....