Lily Rose Blue Deconstructed

Do you ever set a Challenge for yourself? I set a challenge for myself with the Lily Rose (LR) Esther Aliu pattern to work within a limited color range.

I decided on “blue”. While I contemplating this challenge, MSQ had a half price sale on Laundry Basket in a blue range. The charm pack of 42, 5″ squares sounded like the perfect fit for my challenge as it contained blue to teal shades, although there were a few browns included. I took the browns out of the pack and looked at what remained.

It is fun when selecting applique fabric to look for shapes and motifs that can be fussy cut or otherwise included such as insects, butterflies, whole flower and small animals. The charm pack had one square with an intact small bird, which I immediately knew I would use as I am bird lover. Then I discovered the bees! These I wanted to use as well.

Another find in the charm pack was the two squares with leafy vines. Yay! I could use them “as is” rather than cutting individual stems and leaves. For these, I simply applied Heat n Bond to the back and cut out the stems and leaves in both long and shorter lengths.

Next I separated them into lights, mediums and darks. My usual color groupings include really saturated colors and high contrast fabrics, so this was the real challenge for me, to keep within my charm pack and find other ways to accentuate the fabrics rather than strong color contrasts.

I picked up some Superior Threads navy twist to do the applique work, using a single thread color for all except the edges of the Battenburg table cloth.

The fabrics suggested a vintage or “shabby chic” style, so I dug through the Moda grunge fabrics in my stash and found three candidates for the background.

I selected the brighter grunge background with more visible “grunge” markings. This brought some brightness and contract to the fabric line and reminded me of old wall paper.

Laying out the squares before diving into cut shapes helped me understand the color values.

The table cloth fabric is from my stash. A darker table cloth anchors LR well, but it was a bit too dark and ponderous looking so I contemplated how to modify it a bit. After a few days thought, it occurred to me that I had some Battenburg bought several years ago off of eBay for quilting project that I have never used. I took a small plate place mat from that that stash and cut it in half. I did turned edge applique on the table cloth portion. Now my table looked properly set for a vintage vase.

The little bird is rather pale, so a cobalt blue bead for her eye was added.

After reviewing my grunge stash choices for the LR oval “frame”, the darkest grunge was selected.

LR is now put aside as my main machine is out for it’s annual maintenance. When she returns, I will applique the frame and move onto the quilting phase.

Are there more LR in my future?? You bet! I love this pattern and am still quite captivated with it.

Happy quilting! Lennea