Live a Colorful Life Quilt Diary: 226. Color Commotion

Anyone who knows me at all from a quilting perspective knows that my favorite fabric of all time is Oakshott shot cotton.

I have been privileged to correspond fairly frequently with the owner of Oakshott, Michael Oakshott himself, who is extremely generous. He gave me a deep discount when I made an MCC quilt one year using Oakshott, and when I place an order I will often find "surprises" that he has included.

He contacted me earlier in the year about a possible collaboration using a bundle that is slated to be called Jett.

He sent a bundle of 12 colors, with the color threads going one direction, woven with black in the other direction (the warp and weft). One thing I love about Oakshott fabrics is that their dimensions are all larger than the quilting cottons we buy here in the US. For example, we purchase fabric by the yard, which is anywhere from 40" to 44" wide, a fat quarter is about 18" x 22" and a fat eighth is 9" x 11". Oakshott is woven by the meter and is 54" wide. So their fat eighths are a generous 10" x 27" and fat quarters are 19.5" x 27".

I had decided that my Charm Parade pattern would once again work nicely with these fabrics. Each block would have four different colors, with a consistent "lattice" strip of black to tie everything together.

I made quite a few blocks before I realized that Michael had sent me a generous amount of fabric.

I sketched the layout to see what it would take to make 20 blocks, cutting the fabric to the exact dimension that would be sold as a fat eighth, and realized I was short the fabric needed to cut the center square. By the time I realized this dilemma, I had made all the blocks. What should I do?

I decided that the easy solution was to remake all the blocks and use black in the center of each block. And I decided I liked this version much better anyway.

Then I decided to go all out and add a border to this one. I had this cool batik that had a lot of colors that were in the blocks. Ugh.

I switched it to black. Ahh...so much better. If you are wondering what the color is in the black border--I had Darby quilt with colorful variegated thread--just to add a little more "color commotion."