grellow garden geese, a finish

"grellow garden geese," my second fall quilt finish is washed, stocked in the family quilt basket, and in use. i've been waiting for the fall colors to come in around here for a nice outdoor photo, which would show it to best advantage. but those colors are not here yet and i've settled for a basic bedroom photo set.

this quilt was a chance for me to practice flying geese and use some fabrics i wasn't so chuffed about. it's low-stakes, for sure. early on in my quilting, i bought a half yard set of these "origins" fabrics by basic grey for moda after seeing a quilt made from them that i liked well enough, but did not love. a decade later i decided to mix in some solids and coordinating fabrics to see if i could make something i liked. the verdict: meh. kind of. it's fine. but other people around here like it a lot. i think i just need to reconcile myself to the mellow color palette. it's not what i would normally choose to make but it does have it's pleasant aspects.

i split the fabric collection in two, separating the cool-toned fabrics from the warmer ones. this is the warmer collection. i used the multi-colored floral in the photo above as a guide for what other colors to add in the mix. it was feeling a little drab with just the yellows and grellows, so i added some of the brown tones from the floral for more warmth and contrast. i left out the aloe colors because they are in the other set. i hoped the yellows, grellows, and browns would do well together.

in the floral, the browns are small touches of accent color. in the quilt, they are of equal size to the other pieces and cast quite a different effect on the whole. i called the quilt "grellow garden geese" because, originally, the grellow was the strongest color. and i like the alliteration. but with the warm browns added in such quantities, its more like "spiced grellow garden geese" in the end. ah, well. i did lean heavily grellow on the back trying to redeem the name and it's sticking.

the quilting is wide-spaced, horizontal, straight-line quilting in a golden yellow color.

the binding is another fabric from my early quilting days, the popular and pretty "henna garden" from sandi henderson. i was liking the browns in the quilt when it came time to bind it and thought it would make a nice edge to the quilt. i think working on the quilt during the fall season heavily influenced this leaning towards the browns.

somewhere along the way in my making of all the geese, i made two different sizes. the smaller ones were 1/2" smaller than the others. i simplified things by putting the two sizes in separate rows. this resulted in rows that don't match across the seams, but it's not distracting at all. quilters just make do, right?

everyone else in the house seems to like this one and i'm satisfied with it. some of our makes we really love and some we just like. that's okay. i think i do like this quilt better than if i had used the whole collection together. it taught me more about what i like and don't, and it gave me a lot of practice making flying geese. that's not wasted.