Pantone Background

 

I decided to get a bit more of the Pantone Project background fabric to use in-between all the blocks for some "negative space." Friend Jaye found some left at Fat Quarter shop and when it arrived here I compared it to the fabric we've been using on our blocks. And...I think it's a different color.

The new fabric is in the front, and it has a very different hand, even without pre-washing. I thought maybe washing it might fix things up. Sometimes fabrics have chemical brighteners or surface treatments that can alter the appearance or feel of the fabric.

Yeah, that's a really different color, the *official* Pantone Project fabric is on the bottom. One is slightly grey and one is white. The fabric's hand feels a bit closer to the original though. I checked on the fabric manufacturer website and it was never offered in a grey with the white squares. There was a grey but it was much darker and had grey squares. 

I looked more closely at the selvedges and the name and product number do match, but the selvedges themselves are quite different. The new one has the blue line woven in along the edge and the printing of the product information is much lower down on the selvedge. The *original* that we used (and was bought at a local quilt shop) is on the left is still a bit rougher feeling and it sheds a whole lot of long threads on the cut edge. Not a quality fabric I kept thinking as I used it throughout this project. 

The version that I bought from Fat Quarter Shop has a nicer hand and is not shedding threads on the cut edge in the same way at all. Weird, huh? I'm guessing that the manufacturer must have switched which base fabric they were using during production at some point? I remember hearing ages ago that commercial fabric production switches from cheaper to more expensive base fabrics depending on where the end-product fabric was getting sold. So, the same pattern would be produced for different markets, higher-end quilt shop market vs. Walmart or Jo-Anns.  No idea if that's still true or not.

Anyways, I don't know if I can use this new fabric in my Pantone Project quilt or not. My DS said I should dye it slightly grey, but I know that I am not that good of a dyer to match that up or maybe make the situation worse. I think I'll try pinning it up and putting some of the Pantone Project blocks on it to see if I can notice the difference when it's mixed in with colors.

8 Pantone Blocks

 

Some more really lovely Pantone Project blocks came in the mail today from friend Jaye. What a nice surprise!

I really love these fabric choices, especially the fussy cutting for the square in a square.

Now to go play around with these new blocks as well.

Playing With Pantone Project

 

Now that I finally have a design wall to work with, I can finally play around with the blocks from the Pantone Project. I've been wanting to do it ever since I'd made the last block back in May, but hadn't had the space. I got out the two stacks of blocks and 4.5" fabric squares, mine are on the left, sorted by fabric color. I wanted to try my best and not duplicate any fabrics as I was making blocks. Friend Jaye's are on the right, unsorted. It's a whole lot of blocks.

Even though I have all the information in a spreadsheet (of course), I wanted to get my hands on the quantities of each type of block that I have to work with. First I laid out all of the ones I've received from Jaye. Of course I did this in the afternoon thus all the dramatic shadows.

Then I laid out my own blocks on top to make 28 little stacks.

The first blocks my eye landed on were the Ribbon blocks, there are 11 of them.

I doubt I'll keep this central slash of the Ribbon blocks, but it's definitely an interesting arrangement.

I think I really like making stars or larger shapes out of the matching blocks. 

All the rest of the blocks that are not up there quite yet. I think I need to get the Doreen Speckmann book out again and look at some of her block arrangements. This is starting to get fun!

To The 99th

 

Well it's down to choosing fabrics for the last three Pantone Project postcards that I've received. A total of 99 postcards have gotten to me from friend Jaye, some were delayed, nearly destroyed, many were ink stamped, etc. One is in transit some where. Maybe it'll show up at some point. Hopefully before we're ready to put together the quilt tops.

Tah-dah, The last three blocks for this project, down to the 99th.

A closeup of the blocks and the fabric choices I ended up going with.

And now over to a really great group of blocks that friend Jaye handed over at the retreat. A huge bunch, wow! That whole column of Ribbon blocks is so great looking, could maybe make an interesting border? I like the white diamond created by the two Peaky & Spike blocks next to each other.

And more from Jaye, I like the colors in this grouping a whole lot. In the top row, the Sliver block plus the Ribbon block is a super interesting shape.

And 9 More

 I'm pretty pleased with this group of Pantone Project blocks. There were several that I had to choose between a more modern fabric and an older one that both matched pretty well, but as you can see I mostly ended up with more modern choices.

One of the older fabrics, a shiny foil printed looked good as a reverse for the Card Trick block.

I had to lay out the blocks on my Kaffe Fassett flannel design wall on the floor as the actual design wall is completely occupied. Meg wasn't happy because I had to scoot her off of the blocks.

It does look like a pretty fun place to lie down now that she's made me notice that.

From Pirate Black to Candy Pink

All of a sudden I've got 9 Pantone Project blocks to make, so I did the hard part first today...which is choosing the fabrics. Yes there are "only" 8 cards pictured here, the photo was taken before I'd gotten around to getting the mail from the post office box.

 There's another step that I've been doing now that we're so close to the end of the block making step. I've got my blocks that I've made sorted into color groups (Green, Blue, Pink, etc.) and I'm checking to make sure I'm not re-using the same fabrics. Quite a few times I've found that I've chosen the same fabric again as a lot of these cards are really close in tone, tint, and/or shade.

I love friend Jaye's notation on the Pirate Black: Argh!

And 3 More

 

And then three more Pantone Project blocks were done. Tomorrow is a holiday, so these will go in the mail on Tuesday.

These four colors would make for a very nice quilt design.

Three Pantone Blocks

 

I was thinking I'd be going to the BAM meeting today, so I wanted to make the Pantone Project blocks that I've received postcards for lately. Unfortunately the weather has knocked me out once again and I'm not up to driving there. I hate being so reactive to weather changes, but it is what is. I'm glad the meeting was a hybrid one that I can still participate a bit. 

So that meant that these three blocks are done and instead of getting to hand them off in person, I'll be sending them off to Jaye so she gets a nice squishy envelope surprise sometime next week.

I've now made 3 of each of the 27 blocks (wow, that's 81!)  from  Doreen Speckmann's book, Pattern Play.we're working with, so I'm going back around another time making my favorites for the last nineteen. That's wild that we're finally winding this project up. That's if I get my postcards sent of course, I'm a bit behind on that.

Just Peachy

 

I think I’ve found a Pantone color match. The non-tan underside of my arm is really close to 9241. Peachy-beige is what I’d call it.

Whisper Pink that I just received in the mail from friend Jaye,  seen in context with some other nearby colors. Not so very pink at all. I suppose the Pantone Project is going to just have some boring bits, but that’ll just highlight the colors that are a little more exciting.

And hooray, the power and internet and cell service have returned. Nice to re-join the 21st century once again 🥳

Wandering Wednesday: Bridges of The Bay

 

Last week I got the chance to hang out with friend Jaye for a couple days. These are some of the pictures I took on our journeys around the Bay Area. First up a stormy morning drive over the Golden Gate. Not so golden looking in the overcast. You can still see the orange-nesss of the closest to the viewer verticals. The history of the specific paint color: GGB International Orange is so interesting. And there's even an equivalent Pantone color: Pantone 180 (CYMK 19.4%, 77.9%, 79.6%, 3.6%). Sadly, this wasn't included in our Pantone postcard box.

A nice but very cloudy and windy view of the northern part of the San Francisco Bay from the Marin Rod and Gun Club building. Very nice location, which is literally right off the same freeway exit as San Quentin prison. We were meeting with the long arm quilter that friend Jaye works with. She's now the first female president of this 92 year old outdoor sporting club. Not many quilters can claim this sort of day job, very interesting!  Looking at this picture I always forget about all the little teeny island bits scattered about in the bay. It's amazing that they're not all inhabited. Some of the bigger ones are of course, like say, Alcatraz, another famous prison. 

The half mile long fishing pier that the club members get to fish off of. I've never tried pier fishing, I bet it's really fun.

A view of the Richmond San Rafael bridge that we were about to drive over. On a blue sky day, this would be a really gorgeous picture/view, but I like the drama of the sky about to open up with much-needed rain. As a native Californian, I always need to remind my self that to stay out of drought conditions, we almost always need the rain, however inconvenient it might be in the moment.

I've always loved the linear designs made by the trusses and supports of different types of bridges. Also, it's worth mentioning that it's very nice that someone else is driving so that I can safely take a picture. It might be fun to pull out all the bridge pictures I've taken over the years and do an abstract quilt series based on them.  Putting this is in the quilt series ideas bucket. It's probably already in there, so here it is again.

As mentioned previously, we visited Bay Quilts, they had a very famous Hollis Chatelain quilt from 2000 installed about the thread choices, Blue Man. It was very fun to see this one in person, it's hand-dye painted and really gorgeously stitched. There was also an installation of a great group of quilts by Ileana Soto, which are up through the end of January. I honestly wish Bay Quilts was my LQS, could I convince DH that we need to move to the East Bay for that reason? Probably not.

And then finally, after a great BAM meeting, we went and had some dinner in downtown Redwood City I took this picture across an intersection because I love the frescoes, or maybe they're just painted or tiled. I have no idea how old they are, or if they have a story, but it's such a great and striking design. Guess that means I'm putting this in the maybe someday quilt design bucket and the inspired by building motifs quilt series bucket as well.

3 To Catch Up

Made the last three Pantone Project blocks. Aren't they a nice set of colors as well? I like how those two Sliver Left and Sliver Rights go together, very arrow-y and directional. Thoughts for the eventual assembly of this quilt top are beginning to bubble up.

So here's the group of 8 blocks I'll be handing over to friend Jaye soon. All caught up again.

Caught up right until I ventured out to get the mail at our Post Office Box. Well, now I'll have something to do, right?

8 to Catch Up

 
The eight cards I have to do blocks for the Pantone Project are a really lovely palette aren't they? Sometimes it just works out that way. 

I got five of the blocks done today, leaving three more to do, but at least the fabric is already picked out.

For the Card Trick block (the pinky coral one) I flipped the fabric over and used the back. I think it looks okay and provides a little color contrast instead of using the background white fabric.

I'm pretty pleased with these ones, I really like how that yellow Grunge fabric looks. 

Pantone Project Recent Receipts

I've been remiss in posting about the Pantone Project blocks that friend Jaye has been giving me over the last few months. Here's a picture of them all in a group. Fun fabric choices, huh? 

I just want to note here that we started this project way back in July 2022, which is somehow, just absolutely wild to me. My internal clock is really off or something. 

As I remember it, we intentionally didn't set an end date or anything, so it's not like we're behind schedule or anything. Something about not putting undue pressure on ourselves to finish-finish-finish. It is a little strange to have embarked on such a long-term project though. I think it's good thing to have a mix of projects with different time horizons.

I have to keep reminding myself that it's about the process, getting to learn how to make these particular blocks and to color match fabrics to a color on a card has been a great challenging experience. The color matching reminds me a lot of one of the acrylic painting exercises Jaye and I did in art class back in our college days at Cal. The exercise as I remember it was to choose a color image from a magazine, glue it on one part of a page and then mix our paints until we exactly matched the colors in the photo on the page. Very fun thing to learn, really gets the color wheel into your brain permanently.

Honestly one of the best parts is the frequent written communication by postcard. It's rather unique these days. I really enjoy jotting down thoughts and observations on a card, popping it in the mail and then getting one from friend Jaye. A lost art in the days of email and texting and so forth.

Now to get back to making some more blocks to catch myself back up!