Two Lessons

I learned a couple of lessons this weekend as I finished up a project. Perhaps I already knew these lessons but I was reminded of them as I wrapped something up. First, I made this quilt this past summer.

I used the fabulous Moda Maison de Noel fabric line that I had saved for years. I love this fabric.

I just loved the colors and thought the added aqua made it look so fresh. This is a quilt I would leave out even after Christmas. I loved the fabric so much that I saved every last, tiny, itty bitty scrap.

So the first lesson is that no matter how small the scrap, save it. I had to sew scraps together to get enough usable fabric to cut pieces for this runner. So I sewed quite a few scraps together to get new scraps but honestly you can't tell once it's all sewn and quilted. By the way, can you see Miss Penny the cat asleep, reflected in the mirror of the buffet? Asleep on a quilt of course. 

This is how many scraps I had left! I also had some microscopic trimmings when I trimmed up the blocks but those went into the trash. The book to the left is where I got the pattern. Now see how the pattern stands out so well in the runner on the cover and how the pattern does not stand out to well in my version. It's all got to do with contrast.

So lesson two is that contrast is important. There's s lot of contrast in the version above which I made for fall a few years ago. The Christmas version I just did has a lot of busy, light fabrics so the pattern does not show up as well. I was so intent on using just the fabric from that particular fabric line that I did not see the lack of contrast until the end. I would have done better if I had gone to my stash and selected some less patterned lights. So lessons learned-learning something new is good!