Fabric Challenge - In Progress

Last Saturday I went to a retreat to work on a fabric challenge our guild is sponsoring.

This year's fabric is Juggling Summer Black, part of Moda's Zen Chic collection by Brigette Heitland.

These are the supporting fabrics I chose.  It took me absolutely forever to settle on this collection.  My first go was a selection of solids, second go was too scrappy.  This one has lots that read as solids, yet the colors are punchy enough to hold their own.

Since there was so much black in the challenge fabric, I included two more fabrics with black.

The other thing that took forever was picking a pattern.  I decided to go with one from this book, but not the cover quilt. 

I chose a bow-tie pattern, so each of the tiny 1 1/2" squares needed a diagonal line drawn on them.  These are just a few of the 72 that are required.  I cut 80 so I have more blocks to play around with in the setting.

Here is some of the chain piecing, where you can clearly see the wheat-colored linen I'm using for the background.

Even though the quilt is small (about 30" square), there's still a lot of pieces so it will take a bit of time.  I have a feeling the hard part is going to be arranging and rearranging the blocks.   I better have the camera ready so I can be sure to go back to my favorite arrangement.