Colors

The colors for this project were chosen based upon a Thanksgiving my husband, son and I spent in Spray, Oregon. The autumn colors dominated the landscape – and, while the bulk of the land was very dry with glowing pale yellow stalks of grass and muted green sagebrush in the fields, the banks of the John Day River were demarked by wine-red willow branches. The dark gray slate and black burned areas showed up periodically along the road-side.  I chose seventeen colors, mostly Kona cotton. I have worked with Kona cotton fabric before and I appreciate that the fabric is a solid woven color (not printed). The weight of the fabric seems more substantial than a printed fabric. I did include a few fabrics printed to look like linen.

The colors in the study are shown below. The four swatches to the right are the linen print (a print of a linen pattern on cotton).

I ordered one yard of each material. A few of the cuts showed up with a generous yard piece (end-of-bolt).

To begin, I sewed a zig-zag stitch along each raw edge. Then, I washed the fabric. I like to wash the fabric before working with it in case the fabric shrinks or the colors run. I completed a Kona cotton quilt a few years ago with red blocks on a gray background. I did not pre-wash the red and some of the red ran onto the gray borders – leaving a permanent discoloration.

The zig-zag stitch seemed to, partially, prevent the fabric from unraveling. I still had to cut some wadded up threads from each piece before I could iron the pieces.