Rainbow Flower

The Cranes Circling Flowers at Dusk, aka rainbow flower, is something I can’t resist stitching! So much so that, when I couldn’t sleep because of a migraine, I was fussy cutting six more flowers and cranes from another fabric at 5:00 a.m. on Saturday. I have everything cut and printed now for the rest of this piece and hope to have the main piecing finished by mid-week. When it’s finished, we’re going to have to find a way to photograph it. The light at this time of year makes for not great photographs. I can’t wait until spring comes and the roof garden reopens!

When I pulled out the storage container with the Oriental prints and batiks to choose the fabrics in this, I also hauled out the container with striped and directional fabrics. I have a feeling fussy cutting some stripes for this block will be the next thing I play with, although I’m also very tempted to do something with shabby chic fabrics.

I don’t have much to show for the January clamshell report. While I’ve made lots of the black and white arcs for the Pickled Ladies, I only put together two of the pickled clamshells. To see the list of and links to participants in the Clamshell Club, go to Cybele’s Patch.

On the weekend, I got a lot of the cream hexagons for the POTC blocks stitched. At this point, I only need to stitch together the ones needed for two more blocks and that part will be done. So I feel like progress is being made. We were ~~taking~~ trying to take a picture of a finished POTC block when Smudge decided he needed to help. You can just see a bit of the block that he’s lying on.

Lester was having a snooze.

(Click on photo to enlarge)

In the February/March 2011 issue of Quilters Newsletter Magazine, there’s an article on Mosaic Patchwork blocks and Rainbow Flower is one of the blocks featured. With all the fabulous curves in this block, I think it’s irresistible — particularly as a new Inklingo collection for the Rainbow Flower was released on Thursday.

I’m calling this “Cranes Circling Flower at Dusk”. It’s not quite finished as one more round will be added to it, if not more. This one won’t be a large piece, but rather a smaller one with a pretty border which I’m already planning.

Within minutes of downloading the collection, I had prepared my window templates so I could fussy cut the two larger shapes. Within a few minutes after that, I had the fabric cut and ready to print. A few hours later, my block was done.

I was tempted to start another shabby chic quilt with this collection, and may well do that yet but the Oriental prints were what first grabbed my imagination. Imagine this with novelty prints fussy cut for a child’s quilt! Maybe some stripes for the connecting shapes. Or a wonderful polka dot print or — the ideas just are flying through my mind!

The back:

When we take photos of quilt-related things, we generally put a board on the pink chair with a piece of grey fabric over it. As I was getting things ready to take the photo of the Rainbow Flower, Smudge decided he wanted to lay down and have a snooze. I literally turned my back for a second to get the block, turned around and there he was, already asleep. We gently moved him and carried on.