I have been working on my fabric pull for one of the quilts for the online course that I am taking with Rachel Hauser of Stitched In Color.  Do you like how I threw that quilter's turn of phrase in so casually - "fabric pull".  I have just learned that from hearing my teacher and fellow classmates use it.  Before this I would have said something really pedestrian like "picking my fabrics".  Ugh, such an amateur.

The quilt I am working on is called "Emerge" and it's a beautiful design with a star sliding off of a big background fabric.

A couple of cool things about this quilt are that the background fabric can be one piece, and the star, once sewn, is appliqued on, which mean we can use a nice feature fabric, like Rachel did in the example above. Usually in quilts you are working in fabric which is cut into smaller pieces and sewn into blocks, so that (even if it appears to be big chunks of the same fabric) you can't often use large-scale prints or directional weaves/prints for large sections.

I had some trouble finding a really wide background fabric that I liked for this. A lot of the gals in the class are using big prints sourced from Ikea (and in fact Rachel's example includes an Ikea print), but I struck out at our local Swedish temple last week - they only had interesting stuff in heavier, canvas-weight home dec fabrics.  I was really stressing out about what to do (for the record, there is plenty of wide fabric out there for quilting, but it's usually used for backs, not fronts,  and tends to be rather dull). My single complaint about this course so far is that I wish we had been given more time to shop for fabric - there was really only two weeks between sign up and kick-off.  Most of the class seems to be shopping from their stash, but my stash just isn't that big (yet)!

Then I had a lightbulb moment and thought about using some of of Robert Kaufman's amazing House Of Denim collection, which comes in lightweight denims, shirting and chambrays. I am of course, totally an indigo blue addict, so what better than a jewel-coloured star popping out of an indigo background? I ordered a couple of fabrics and figured I could pull the star fabrics from my stash later.  

These are my two options at the moment.

I have a nice shirting for the back as well.  I can't decide on the solid or the stripe.  Also I have just ordered some of the chambrays - I have a small piece of a dotted one which I love the feel of.  So, we'll see.  I'm pretty happy with those star fabrics, but as they only require small pieces, I do have tons to choose from in my stash.  Votes on a postcard please!

Emerge is actually the second quilt we're learning in the course... but my fabric order for the first quilt was delayed (grrr) so I'm just working on selections for this one until I can get stuck in.

It's all terribly exciting.