Looks like spring to me

This may not be everyone's idea of spring, but it looks pretty close to me. The sky blue, warm greens of new grass, browns of the tree trunks as they begin to be clothed in new leaves, plums of spring bulbs and tree buds. I'm generally not a pastel person. This fat quarter set, Twiggy by Moda, is an encapsulation of my current favorite color palette. Add some dark coral or terracotta in there and a little yellow, and that's me in a nutshell.

My color preferences seem to have evolved as my quilt collection has grown. At times, my color choices were driven by the colors used by my favorite designers. About ten years ago I fell in love with the collections by Robyn Pandolph, and my quilts were softer and more pastel. The muted dusky colors of the Thimbleberries line appealed to me with their richness, so you'll find those in my closet too. I almost never make anything with bright colors, and there's never a lot of red or orange. Almost no black or gray, either.

There's always a good range of blue, and I've made several blue and white quilts, both for myself and as gifts. Blue and yellow are represented too. When I became captivated by the Red Delicious BOM, I was torn because I just don't use red that much. But Esther Alui's Yahoo Group has shown me that this pattern could be wonderful in other color schemes. One quilter is making it in black and white, and it's very striking. I started thinking about my blue and white porcelain collection, and how beautiful this pattern would be if blue were substituted for red. It might become a complement to my Blue Willow dishes. There's food for thought there.

This glorified nine patch is made from a fat quarter bundle with additional yardage for borders. I decided to make blue/cream and green/cream centers and split the "melon" patches down the middle, brown on one side and plum on the other. The plum will face the blue squares and the brown, the green ones. Here's a sketch: There are 36 blocks, which comes out 66" x 66", so borders were necessary. If I had done it all nine patch blocks, it would take years! Also, since the squares come out of the fat quarter bundle, there was only enough for 36 blocks. So 36 blocks it is.