The Splendid Sampler

Have you heard of this?  Pat Sloan and Jane Davidson created a 100 block Mystery Quilt that will run for 50 weeks, 2 blocks a week, with 84 designers providing 6" blocks, tips, techniques, giveaways, lots of stuff to learn.  The Facebook Group has over 10,000 followers and is growing rapidly as the February 14 start date approaches.

Here is all the info you need to get sucked in. OH, I mean to "consider" this project:
The Splendid Sampler.  I recommend the Facebook group if you do join in, there is quite a buzz there.

I only really paid attention to this two days ago and selected my fabrics to make a "Big Girl" quilt for Stella, my 8 month old  Grand-Girl:

As you can see, she is out-growing her baby quilt.  And this might take a year or two to get finished so NOW is a good time to start her next quilt.

Shopping in my stash, I came up with this palette:

The fabric amounts recommended for this project are 30-35 fat quarters.  My small pieces are fat eighths, there are 8 fat quarters, the turquoise peeking out is a yard and the big, bold floral is 2 yards--way more than enough to get started.  I may need a few more small white prints for background--there are more of those in my closet when needed so no worries.

When I posted this photo Saturday to the Facebook Group I was totally amazed with the response:  more than 260 people "Liked" this post and 45 took time to make a Comment.  Many asked about the large floral:  it's Brush Dance by Susan Rooney Design for Benartex.  It's fairly new and my local shop, Patches & Stitches, Huntsville, AL  still has it.

The thing I find so odd about many of the fabric choices people are making for this project is how many people think they have to use a SINGLE LINE OF FABRIC.  They are buying fat quarter bundles of complete lines.  Maybe because that's an easy way to get fabrics that "go" together, or maybe because new quilters think this what they are "supposed" to do.  What about YOU:  do you mix, match, shop your stash, and add different lines in the same quilt or stick with only one line??
I'm very curious about this phenomenon that I see across the QuilterNet so please let me know your opinion.

And don't even get me started on new patterns coming out that put bias on the outside edges of blocks--what is with THAT?!  Call me old-school, no bias on outer edges for me.

Let's Quilt!

Barbara