Last weekend, while my husband was away on a “dude’s weekend” I took the opportunity to clean up my stash a little. Needless to say there was fabric from one end of the house to the other… it looked like a fabulous colourful fabric bomb had gone off. During this process I realized I had somehow accumulated a decent size stash of brown fabric. I am still not sure how this happened as brown is definitely not a colour I use at all, ever, but now I had found it I of course had to use it.
I love a good challenge and finding good uses for brown fabric is a perfect challenge for 2014. Fired up it took me less than 5 minutes to find some inspiration in my house, and the game was on.
This inspiration, a glass vase….
became this fabric pull…
The pattern I chose was a fabulously simple free paper piecing number from Quilters Cache… the Fly Foot 2 .
Which when you do alternating colour blocks turns out like this…
These blocks when added to other blocks make this amazing plaid like pattern…
For the first time in my quilting life I have used brown as a predominate colour and I love the results. There will be more brown combinations in my future… so stay tuned.
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What a wonderfully BEAUTIFUL block and quilt. I’ve already bookmarked the quilter’s cache. 🙂 Great job!
I love Quilters Cache, it is a labyrinth of patterns that you can easily get lost in.
I like those color combos a lot – very bold!
This is great! I love fabric-inspired quilts. I could use some of those warm oranges here to fend off the cold. We got six more inches of snow last night!
The blocks feel very autumnal and warm. I am trying to ignore the cold weather but I have to admit I am jealous of your snow. We have cold but no snow. Snow makes cold more fun for us Aussies that have never been caught in a blizzard or had frost bite!
Well, that is way cool.
Love the colors and motion!
Wonderful! once again, I have stash envy 🙂
I love your colour combination and the block pattern is great. It suits the brown/orange combo beautifully. You are making a lovely quilt.
Oh that’s fantastically bold and beautiful!
Beautiful and vibrant…just pops! 🙂
It looks good. Brown does get a hard time!
Quite surprising how such a simple block becomes very striking when used as a repeat. Love it!
Orange and brown was a fantastic choice it gives the quilt such warmth – I love the piecing too
I really like brown quilts, though I haven’t made one in a while. The orange and brown look great together!
This block is awesome! I adore how this is turning out. And that guitar print? Amazing!
Who knew there was such great brown fabrics out there. I think the guitar print is the only brown novelty fabric I have in my stash… hmm I hear an excuse to go fabric shopping coming on! Thanks Ashley.
I like brown a lot better when I call it chocolate! And your browns are definitely chocolate! Lovely with the hot orange. Think inside-out Jaffas!
I miss jaffas…and bananas…and cherry riles…and musk life savers.
And, if we’re talking about chocolate, Freddo Frogs. Perhaps I need to send you a care package when the yearning for lollies gets too strong!
Ah freddos I am partial to the filled ones and caramelo koalas.
This is so pretty! I struggle to play with brown but you’ve definitely inspired me! It goes beautifully with orange!
Lovely! One of my goals is to use brown this year…
I’m never really drawn to the brown either, but have had a kind of beige rusticy quilt in mind for a while now. I love your take on it, the colours have a real sixties feel 🙂
Love quilterscache, Aladdin’s cave of patterns 😉 I love brown but I dont have it, think I might need to remedy that 😉
Quilters Cache is amazing but not the easiest site to navigate thru. Love it when I find a great pattern, which happens a lot.
Brown? who would have thought? You’ve worked magic with it!
How do you do this?? You are AMAZING. I bow down to your paper piecing royalness.
It is a crazy weird obsession combined with an inability to be really really precise with normal piecing. I can get results with paper piecing I can not get with normal piecing. I suppose it is kind of a cheat!
Love the colors and the pattern you chose–although those are not colors I would immediately chose either. That step between the fabric pull and what to do with it always throws me a bit.
I get stumped every now and then by what pattern to use… but I treat these colour play exercises as test runs on ideas. If I like the result I make the quilt, if it does not work I find another use for the blocks or pull them apart.
This reminds me of a piece of fabric I hung on the wall over my waterbed in the 70’s. LOVE IT! It’s so much fun to do a little colour exploration outside of the statis quo.
Very cool! Like you, I just completed a “mostly” brown quilt and was surprised by how much I had in my hoard.
Thanks for sharing! I love the secondary pattern that emerges.
Just an FYI – your link to the pattern doesn’t quite work. It will work if the “http:/” at the end is removed.
Ellen thanks. I have fixed the link now.
It’s lovely; everything you do is amazing! I’m not fond of brown, either, but I like it with the oranges you’ve chosen, and also with a pale aqua. 🙂
I had pale aqua/blue as my next brown combo. I love that combo.
This is so gorgeous! I love this pattern, and probably wouldn’t have found it myself. Thank you! I’m thinking its going to be great as a quilt for my mother in law. She recently tried to steal my yellow quilt, so I’m going to have to make her one of her own I think.
I love this pattern. It is so simple and yet so fabulously effective. I know it is a pattern I will use again. Would love to see what you do with it.
Hey, that’s not fair! Your browns are modern and fun unlike many of us in the rest of the world!
Love your quilt ~~ as always.
Look closely and you will see some decidedly un-modern browns. I just hid them.
This looks great! You are very good at combining colors.
I’m back . . . I just went to the link you provided and I want to say, I like your choices much better than those shown on the link! Again, you have a real knack for combining colors!
Thanks Kathleen. I am always amazed at how different colour or fabric choices can make blocks look so different.
I am not a brown fan either, but I love what you have done here – both the colours (yes, very Jaffa chocolate) and the simple but just right pattern.
You WOULD make brown look good! 😀 I was just talking with someone today about how brown has gotten no love, and perhaps now that purple’s getting its turn, brown can be next. 🙂
Great colors. And great vase too. I hope you’re enjoying the snow, Cath! G
Hi G. I am loving the snow…it has meant lots of extra sewing time.
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love how you came up with your color combination.