Fall Quilt-along: Block 1

I have joined AmandaJean's fall quilt-along over at Crazy Mom Quilts. The first block was great fun, and a good contrast from the tiny Dear Jane blocks that I've been working on over the past few months. These blocks came out 12.5" square. My thinking about the color scheme goes like this:

You know that moment in the spring when you step into the woods and suddenly everything is green? And it feels like a surprise because you could have sworn you were just there yesterday and all the trees and paths were grey and dead-looking? Well, for me there's a moment like that in the fall, too.

It usually happens after the first really good, really cold autumn rain storm around here-- the first day after the first really cold, wet night, when all the leaves are guaranteed to be changing. I was walking the pup in the park near our house last week, and the timing was perfect. I looked up to see slick, dark grey tree trunks broken up by bright yellow and orange and green leaves. And again, that autumn light, so clear and sharp, the light that makes the colors glow.

Up until now, all of my quilts (and I use the term loosely, as I'm much more interested in the patchwork than the quilting... I'll let you make of that what you will) have had light backgrounds, or have been so scrappy that their general value came out somewhere in the middle. So I was excited to try something with a dark background. The charcoal grey color is actually truer in the first photo, paired with the green batik, but it's interesting how the different contrast colors can play with our (and the camera's) perception of the grey. I'll use all batiks, in greens and golds and oranges, with a few reds and dark blues thrown in as the accent colors. I'm going to make two of each square in the quilt-along, in the hope that I'll come out with a queen-sized sampler quilt.

I'm hoping that I can capture some of that magic that I feel walking into that wet and bright leafy woods each fall.