The Patchwork Prism!

So.....I have loved Anna Maria Horner's designs for a long long time (well....long to me, 3-4 years, I mean that's a long time right!).  So when I was reading her blog, which incidentially is really funny and heartfelt.....I stumbled upon her patchwork prism quilt.
If you go to her website through Janome....you can find and download the pattern for FREE!!!!  heck yeah, right!
http://www.annamariahorner.com/janome_me.html

Now.....with several other quilts in the works, I was not going to attempt it anytime soon, but then sweet diesel designs (http://sweetdieseldesigns.com/) posted she was hosting a QAL, and with some amazing prizes to be had....I need to buckle down and start it.  IT....is quilt number three that is in process...along with my precious quilt using echo and my swoon!

I started with the purples, after two attempts at making the templates....I found out that paper templates laminated don't work well....so I switched to cardboard.  But with the purples done, I thought...piece of cake

BUT......once you are done the center prism color it actually gets really difficult to select your colors!  I was kind of surprised, because I love patchwork.....but depending on what your colors are next to....depends on how they translate within the quilt.  Because you are using pale and medium colors, they can actually read differently based on the neighboring color!  And within the quilt, the pale's create smaller prisms that should sparkle or pop.....that is tricky!!!!!  really tricky actually

I ended up cutting each piece of fabric and placing it on the design wall one at a time, so that I could gage what worked and what didn't.  It took me days to cut everything, and I even scrapped some of the fabrics that I had already cut, because they looked pale at first then started feeling medium!  I felt a little overwhelmed......but with my last piece cut this morning, I am ready to start the presewing!!!!!  and I love it!!!!

I mentioned this quilt was a monster right?  It had to be taped to my design wall because the last row didn't fit, but I couldn't not see it completely together!  And I have actually made a few changes after taking this photo, because some of the pale's again seemed to turn into medium

so.....soon we will sew!!!!