After working on them for two days, I finally have the applique blocks drawn for the book on the mill girls.  The quilt has a center medallion made up of four applique blocks.  Then, in the border blocks that surround the medallion there is one applique block repeated eight times.  There are other blocks in the border round, but they are pieced. 
So now that I have my master patterns--and my fabric which arrived fresh from the factory on Friday--I'm ready to begin.  There's still a lot of prep work for the applique since I like to use the freezer paper and starch method.  And, it's almost inevitable that I will make changes as I work through the quilt construction.  You know how it goes, sometimes a fabric you thought would look perfect, doesn't.  Or you want to add something.  Or subtract something. 
In any case, I am so, so excited to get this project going.

Oh . . . and I've been working on another quilt for the book.  It's going to be one of the additional projects.  Here's a little peek at some of the stars that are going into this pink and brown beauty made from the Cocheco III collection by Judie Rothermel for Marcus Fabrics.

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This is one of the projects for the upcoming book, Away From Home: The Story of the Lowell Mill Girls, that just kept getting put on the back burner.  And because I kept putting it aside, I seemed to loose my momentum.  But last week I went to sew with my group and brought along the last of the sashing strips that needed appliqueing.  That got me going again.  This morning I sewed and sewed and finally finished up the quilt top.

So, I thought I would share my process on this quilt.

Here's the initial quilt design I began with in Electric Quilt7.  You will see in the photos that I changed the frames around the applique blocks so they are all the same fabric.  I tried the green and red stripe fabric, but didn't like the look of it.  I wound up making all the frames from the same floral fabric I used for the border.

The fabric is from the Cocheco I collection by Judie Rothermel for Marcus Fabrics.

Applique preparation . . .

Here's a block . .

Some blocks sew together and placed on the design wall . . . and yes, my photo is rather fuzzy.  At this point I'm concerned that I have too much contrast in my block background fabric and my sashing fabric.  It's not quite the more subtle look I'd imagined in my EQ7 rendering.  You have no idea how many sashing fabrics I auditioned before making my decision.   I have been known to take things apart and completely re-work them . . . but I want to get this done.  I have other projects awaiting.  My decision was to press forward. 

All blocks sewn together on the design wall ready and waiting for borders.

Close up of quilt, borders attached.  (Yes, those are my feet--didn't mean to get them in the photo.  But at least my nail polish matches!)

And here's the entire quilt laid out on my floor.  The quilt has more contrast in the light areas than I had originally planned, but I think the light areas will really show off whatever quilting is placed there.  Now I'm debating whether to keep the outside square or put a light scallop on it to echo the block frames.  I also thought about really playing up the reproduction look of the quilt and putting a ruffle or lace along the outside edge.  Maybe that's worthy of some research . . . 

In the meantime, let me share another color story from my EQ7 files.  It's done in various Fig Tree fabrics that I have in my stash.  So tempting . . . but do I want to make the same quilt again?

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