Evolution of a Quilt Design

This is a tile that I brought back from a trip to Barcelona, Spain.  It was a gift from Benedicte Bodard who rescues these tiles from dumpsters.  You can't see it but this 8" tile has about 1" of cement on the back. I brought home 3 tiles from the trip.  To say it was a challenge to transport is an understatement because with the cement the 3 tiles weighed about 20 pounds!  To deal with the airline weight  restrictions, I schlepped it in my carry on.

I was contacted by the magazine, Quilt Life to write an article about using  tiles as design inspiration for quilts.  They requested a quilt that was not in !Quilt Fiesta!, so being the glutton for punishment, I said "Sure, I can do it".  I chose this tile because of its sentimental value and I thought it would give the quilt  a nice diagonal movement. Even though this tile says "craftsmen" to me,  I decided to use fabrics that were jewel tone batiks in a variety of purples, blues and teals.

This was my initial interpretation, but when I multiplied it and created my virtual quilt top, I thought it looked a bit plain. 

So I added the purple designs on the sides. 

I liked it better, but thought the design looked dark (ignoring my horrible photography).

So I added the teal to brighten the dark purple.  It worked.

Since the chosen fabrics made it what I would call a limited scrap quilt, I wanted to try and keep from having too many of the same fabrics touching each other. After I positioned the blocks on my design wall, I used sticky notes on each block to delineate the row and column.  Lately I find myself getting distracted during construction and these location notes help me to keep all the blocks where I intend them to be.

I very rarely buy fabric for the back of my quilts.  I try to use what I have.  This keeps me from having to buy more fabric.  I use up what may be left over from the top.  Sometimes I find myself in a rut always working with the same colors.  When using up these scraps from the current and maybe some previous projects, it forces me to work in other colors.

I am having trouble coming up with a name for this quilt.  If you have any suggestions, I would love to hear.  In the meantime, you'll have to wait to see the finished quilt when it is published, probably in a winter issue of Quilt Life.  It's a great magazine. You'll love it.