Colour My World Brown

Okay, this was the toughest month yet for the Colour My World Challenge...at least for me. Brown is not a colour I like using in my quilts. And I don't wear it. Ever. I found that focussing on just using brown though made me look closer at the different fabrics that I was using. What a rainbow of undertones! Some had a green undertone, some yellow, others orange, and even purple. Fascinating!

Even though I had grand plans of trying another technique, I ended up doing the Twelve Trees block with hand dyes. I wanted to see what it would look like with the hand dyes vs. the solid shot cottons. I added a 1/2" border on one side and then an improv asymmetrical border.

Premature finish

Quilting Detail: Leaves and bark 

I also wanted to play around with the free motion quilting to see if I could find something that would also work for my Seeing The Forest quilt. 

I did some leaves in the tree canopy, lines in the tree bark, and some grass along the ground. In the dark brown at the bottom, I did some tight landscape FMQ that we did for the FMQAYGQAL. I did random angled straight lines in the asymmetrical border.

Quilting Detail: Leaves, Grass, Landscape

I thought I'd share something I noticed about the threads. I used a mix of Aurifil, Gutterman and Mettler threads, depending on the colours I needed and what I had on hand. The Aurifil that I used for the leaves went through my machine like butter. I wish I'd used a darker shade of thread for the leaves and grass so they'd show up better against the background. Lesson learned.

It's a good thing I was just doing straight-ish lines in the bark with the Gutterman, because my machine was not liking it. It felt like I had to work harder to move the piece around. Or maybe it felt much harder because I had just had such an easy time with the Aurifil.

The Mettler was good for the landscape section. I noticed some pop-ups of the lower thread, but once I lowered the tension, they went away and it was smooth sailing from then on.

This time I pin basted and had no problems with the FMQ. I think the spray basting glue (June Tailor) that I've been using on past challenges may be from a bad batch. 

Once I finished the FMQ, I zigzagged the edge, pronounced it "good enough" and went to bed. 

When I woke up yesterday morning though, I was not happy with that asymmetrical border. Too heavy. Too asymmetrical. Too something anyway. So I chopped it in half and QAYG'ed it to the other side. Feeling much better about it now. I'm not loving the piece, but it feels more balanced.

Colour My World Brown finished piece

Now, I highly doubt that I'll ever LOVE brown, but I have a greater appreciation for it now. And who knows, maybe someday I'll use it as the neutral in a quilt.

How about you? I can't wait to see what you've done with this challenge! Easy peasy? Or did you dread the due date like I did?


July's challenge colour is pink! Easy after brown, right? I'll share some tidbits about pink this week.

Oh, and since the TGIFF! linky is still open over at Sparrow In Flight, I'm going to link up. If you get a chance, check it out and link up one of your own recent finishes.



Have a fabulous weekend and Happy Canada Day to my fellow Canucks!