Blue in Bloom {Project Planning}

As mentioned in my August Brutal Honesty post, I am planning to make throw sized quilts for the college girls that I advise as end-of-the-year gifts. Last year, I made the two Little Firecracker quilts for their predecessors and made a sizable dent in my 2.5 inch strip stash.

This year, I decided to again make "twin quilts" -- the same pattern for both quilts but in different color schemes. I decided on our Honey, Bunny, and Doll pattern, Blue in Bloom, originally made and designed by my sister as a king sized quilt. 

I am making the throw sized version, which finishes at 55" by 75". The first thing I needed to do was stealthily figure out what colors to use in each quilt, so I emailed one of their cohorts, who got me the 411 -- one said shades of blue and one said green. So one quilt will be a "Blue" in Bloom, and one will be a "Green" in Bloom!

For both quilts, I wanted to pull the majorities of the fabrics from my stash. This was relatively easy to accomplish given the yardage requirements for the prints: 1 1/4 yard, 3/4 yard, 1/2 yard, 1/4 yard, and 1/4 yard. 

For the Blue version, I was able to pull all of the fabric from my stash. Here are my five fabrics:

The blue large floral will be the blue in the original quilt, the yellow geometric print will be the outer green border fabric, the aqua floral will be the yellow pinwheel fabric, and the green floral and multi-colored chevron print fabrics will be the green and teal fabrics from the center. 

For the green version, I struggled to find a green or mainly green fabric in my stash that would work. I found a green dot print that I loved online and ordered 5 yards of it so that I have enough of it to back the quilt with the same fabric. 

The green dot will be the blue in the original quilt, the light green and brown floral print will be the outer green border fabric, the brown print will be the yellow pinwheel fabric, and the purple/brown and aqua medallion fabrics will be the green and teal fabrics from the center. I also have a half yard of a green/brown version of the purple/brown fabric that I plan to use as the binding.

Since these two quilt tops will be my main focus while I am on quilt retreat next week, I did all of the cutting for both of these projects other than the backgrounds.

I still need to make final decisions on the background fabric for each and cut the background fabric, but I will do that once I can compare colors in person in a few days. I am thinking white for the blue version and some sort of off-white for the green version.

Wish me luck -- my goal is for these to become complete quilt tops while I am gone!

Sharing at Finished or Not Friday!