When the Modern Quilt Guilds of the Pacific Northwest were recently invited to submit quilts for a Quilt Show in August I was a little apprehensive.  The guild lines were that the quilts could use black, white and the shades of grey in between and as you can tell from my quilts I love colour.  We were allowed, if we wanted, to add one colour in one place but that was it.

I pondered this challenge for a month or so and then one day, as I was talking to an old friend it hit me what I could do.  You see in my previous life I was in film and a key essential tool in the camera kit was always a grey card.  This card was used to white balance and focus the camera (back in the old days before digital took over!).  A grey card would make the perfect quilt for this project….

So I found an image similar to the cards I used to use…

Did some crazy quilts maths… not something I usually do and not something that comes easily to me…

Pulled some greys from my stash…

And went to work.  The end result was this…

I am thrilled with how it turned out.  I was really impressed with the depth of my grey stash, which allowed me to do some fun colour graduation….

I cheated a bit and used some black and white stripes for the focus bars… I was not going to be able to get that kind of sharp precision with piecing… (but it is driving me crazy that photos in this post seem out of focus unless you click on the image to enlarge it….@%*$#^! WordPress….AUGH!!!!!

I also managed to get my favorite prints, Mirror Ball and Pearl Bracelets into the mix.  Now all I have to do is work out how I want to quilt it.  I was thinking of echoing the circle on the card in the quilting but that is as far as I have gotten so far.  I do know that I am going to add one tiny splash of colour in the binding.

I am really thrilled with this mini quilt (it is 36″ long by 28″ wide)… not because it is amazing or beautiful or revolutionary.  I love it because it has such meaning for me.  As I stepped out of my film career I stepped into quilting… and this quilt represents that life change for me.