Winter Dreaming

The snow made me do it.

On this early morning it was snowing as I worked at my shop owner tasks. Something in the beauty and magic of the gently falling snow bemused me and I heard the song of the of the Sirens luring me, gently but insistently toward the treacherous rocky shore of a new fabric purchase. Not knowing how I got there, I found myself gazing at the new Soul Blossoms collection by Amy Butler. The colors of this collection intrigue me. They run from cool, the cool that gentles the heat of the tropics (hibiscus pink, azure, lime) to warm, cinnamon brushed persimmon. The designs are bold and souful. I am in love with this piece.

Surrounded by beautiful fabric, with snow making a warm cocoon of my quiet shop, I wandered the store with this beautiful Siren in my arms, on a quest for the perfect fabric to complement my beloved.

Here are my prizes.

From left, my first find was a gorgeous cotton sateen from Moda. The sheen doesn't show in my photo, nor does the rich color, which I want to call coffee, but it has too much red in it.

The pretty pink floral is part of the Soul Blossoms collection. The colors only loosely relate to my Siren though they are part of the same collection. I like that, it keeps my quilts from being too "matchy-matchy" but it creates a challenge. How will I draw the pieces together into an artful coexistence? There are fresh challenges like this in every quilt. That is why the craft never grows dull or tiresome.

I also like that this pretty pink fabric introduces blue, my favorite color. There is no blue in my Siren ... well ... Sirens do have their faults. This whimsical pink will be my bridge to blue. The orange in the flowers and the cinnamon tracery in the border will anchor my Siren on one end; then this lovely pink will arch over, like a rainbow, to a bright beautiful blue.

Don't you love the border stripe? It runs along each selvage. If I had garment making skills, I would make a dress for my two year old granddaughter, with the stripe along the hem. This fabric also comes in green with a matching green edge stripe that would be perfect for a cool sundress. You can see the green along with the rest of the collection on the Collections page of the website.

The cinnamon vine swirl is one of Moda's Puzzle Pieces our "go to" blender collection here on Ruby Street. We love the rich hues, the broad spectrum of color and the elegant designs in this collection. This cinnamon piece borders on orange and converses with the cinnamon/persimmon background of my Siren.

From warm cinnamon vines my eye lights on a cool lime green Crossweave, again from Moda. Crossweaves are woven with two different colors of fiber, giving them complexity and interest. In this case the texture warms up the fabric and lets it cozy up with the cinamon tones without loosing it's zing.

The last piece is my Siren. My photo, though not as clear as the swatch photo from Moda, does bring out the orange tones, like cinnamon heated over an orange flame. Perhaps it was the heat that attracted me on this snowy day. So there I am, happily foundered upon the shore of a new fabric purchase.

What will these fabrics become?