Using a panel to create a Thank You Quilt

I'm sure I'm not the only quilter who has a list in her head about the quilts she wants/needs to make for others. When we moved last year the ongoing joke was that my quilting room needed to be much bigger as it seemed to be the location for the majority of the boxes being unloaded and moved into the house. Hmmmm. In the end the talk amongst my husband's friends (the movers) was that it would seem like they each deserved a quilt!

Thinking about making a quilt for three different men made has kept my brain busy. When I walked into my local quilt shop last month and saw this panel I knew it was perfect for one of those quilts!

This panel is called, Woodland Wonders, by Studio E. It reminds me of the decorative rugs from the 70s that people would put on the wall - especially the green/blue tinged sky. I bought the panel and put it up on my design wall so I could look at the color palette and think some more.

Then I started pulling from my stash.

I found a Banyan batik blue that has flecks of green in it. The blue does a good job of framing the scene bringing out the blues in the panel and complementing the other colours. I also found a meter of grey fabric and decided it would work well as a background colour.

My next idea came about because most of my stash fabrics that I found to go with the colours in the panel were small - less than a fat quarter and most just strips and bits. That led me to think about making small blocks with a mix of colours. 

I love this little block! I like how it let me use up really small pieces of fabric and how I had to get creative and add more sections to the block to use the fabrics I had.

The photo above shows how I had to stop myself from making the blocks before I planned more of the quilt. It didn't make sense to cut small pieces before I had all of my larger pieces. I decided at this point that I would make the small framed pinwheels and set them on point around the panel using the grey fabric and then make larger pinwheel blocks to go around next.

I cut the bigger pieces from my stash into 3 1/2" squares and then I had more of a variety of scraps to create the mini pinwheels. 

Here's some progress! You can see that I changed my mind about making all the blocks in the first border framed mini pinwheels. To be honest, I thought that was a lot of work and would actually take away from the panel. I played a bit more with that blue Banyan batik and set the blocks between blue and grey setting triangles and put just a plain square of fabric in between some of them.

Back to it!

Remember the Online Quilters Meet and Greet is still happening! Lots of quilters have visited here (waving hi!) and you can keep visiting and entering the giveaway all month.

Click on the image above to go visiting :)

You can enter the giveaway once from each of the blogs you visit - and it's a treat filled giveaway! Enjoy!

With Joy,

Sarah V.