Fractured Quilts

Where has the time gone since my last post?  It has been a busy week and a half - fun stuff and some not so fun stuff but things are coming together. 

 I became enamored of fractured quilts when a friend showed me her fractured quilt last fall.  I found what I thought was the perfect fabric while shopping at a quilt retreat last fall and bought it.  Since I wasn't sure of how many copies of the motif I needed and since it was the end of the bolt, I bought the remainder and went home with 6 copies of the motif. At some other shop, I found a fractured quilt pattern to guide me.  When I looked at the pattern, it said to use a grid and cut individual pieces before sewing on the 2" x 2" grid.  That's not me AT ALL!

Finally found a book by Brenda Esslinger - Fabulous Fractures.  It talked about strip piecing.  That's more my style!  So, at the Cambria quilt retreat in March  I worked on a fractured quilt and loved the way it came out.  The original motif was small - roughly about 20" x 20" yet the finished piece is 45" x 49", a large wall hanging.  Interesting to me that it looks so bright in the picture yet in my living room it appears much darker.  Perhaps that speaks to the light in the bedroom where the picture is taken and the lack of good natural light in my living room.

Moonlight Flight - how's that for a title?  Quilt pieced at Cambria retreat with 4 repeats of the primary pattern.

Anyway ... I had some time that I was calling spare time the other day.  In that spare time, I thought I'd work on a quick fractured quilt with the two remaining panels of the fabric used in the above quilt.  In her book, Brenda had used the same fabric and fractured the pieces vertically.  While I thought that look was interesting, I wanted to fracture my remaining two panels horizontally to get the moon rising.  I also used a lighter gold fabric for the border to give it a slightly different look.  What do you think?

Moon Rising - using only 2 repeats. 

They both need to be quilted and I'll get to that this week (I hope).  I've been thinking about how to quilt them all week and think I've finally got the quilting plan figured out!  I do like it when a plan comes together!

In the meantime, I've been working on some other projects that have due dates coming up.  Blog to you later!

Cheers!