gradient fill :: layer cake (along) sampler

The SMS liberty+oakshott+aurifil giveaway is open one more day :o)

It's hard to believe that almost three months have gone by since Amanda @ Material Girl Quilts wandered into my office (yep, we're irl coworkers!) and asked what I thought about a Layer Cake Sampler she'd just designed.   Within no time, she had whipped up not only the original, but a second version of that beauty, and then drafted something like a dozen posts for the QAL.  I—on the other hand—worked at, um, a snail's slightly different pace.

When I got Malka Dubrawsky's "From Outside In" in hand, I have to say I was a bit overwhelmed by all the color.  Totally infatuated, don't get me wrong, just a little a bit intimidated by the fact that this lovely line involved contrasting (!) color ways.  (Resident analogous designer here.)  So I did the first thing I thought to do:  color sorted a gradient from red to yellow to green to blue.  And then pulled my all-time favorite oakshotts (the tan/brown earth element series), cut them into 10" squares, and sorted them by value.  You know, to ground all those vibrant colors :o)

Starting off with the lightest oakshotts—natural/beige—in the red corner, I paired up those earthy tones with the colorful layer cake squares until the darkest browns reached the blue corner.  After that, I sewed and cut each pair into eight HSTs.  (Evidently I was operating with at least some sense of urgency back then.)

Fast forward to mid-May... and after one (sweatshop) weekend those 320 HSTs were pressed, trimmed, and ready for a whole 'nother round of sorting (my favorite pastime?).

And just like that, I had a spiffy new quilt top.

...That is really quite large.

...and has somewhat astonishingly matchy points.

Now... how to quilt it?

Linking up with Amanda, who has some pretty sweet prizes for the QAL link up this weekend, and crazy mom quilts for my first May finish!

m+m+m+m {layer cake alonging}

material girl quilts + moda + malka dubrawsky + michael oakshott 

Have you heard about the Layer Cake Sampler Quilt Along hosted by Amanda of Material Girl Quilts?  As many of you may or may not have figured out by now, Amanda works across the hall from me.  (And not in some strange, figural sense.  I mean her office is quite literally twenty feet away from mine.)  So when she mentioned she was asking Moda to supply a few layer cakes for her QA, I may or may not have started making my wish list immediately.

At the top of that list?  Malka Dubrawsky's latest line, "From Outside In."  I always admired her first collection ("A Stitch in Color") but was never lucky enough to get my hands on any.  Well, thanks to Amanda and Moda, my luck certainly changed this time around :)

Naturally the first order of business once I had these in hand was to sort "From Outside In" in color order (by moonlight, no less, as that's when most items get crossed off the creative agenda in this house).

I then trimmed my earthy oakshott elements into forty 10" squares (read:  I made my own multi-gradient background layer cake), matched up the two stacks, and X'd away per the hostess's instructions.

Next up on the to do list?  Sewing, cutting, and trimming forty sets of squares into 320 (!) 4½" HSTs.  Good thing I've got a perfectly-sized square ruler on standby?  ;o)

This quilt is definitely unlike any I've done before ('along or otherwise), and I think that's why I was so happy to try it out à la {no} hats.  (I'm loving the opportunity to play around with Malka's vibrant color scheme in the comfortable context of my trademark gradient style.  My husband is just thrilled that we'll finally have a bed-sized quilt that won't take ages to finish.  Win win?  I think so!)

So, will you be sewing along with us?  If you haven't already, you should take a look at the background information here.  If you like what you see, join the flickr group over here to share your progress, or use the hashtag #layercakesamplerqal on IG.  Or both :)

Hope to see you around those parts, and looking forward to seeing what everyone comes up with!