Swap Quilt-The Design

I signed up for Jenna's SewHappyGeek Tablerunner/Wall Hanging Swap and was so excited to make something cool for my partner.  It's actually my first swap ever.  Based on stalking my partner's Flickr profile and inspiration board, I decided to make a fall-foilage wall hanging in some calm, neutral colors.  Very strange for me, something not bright!  Here's the final wall-hanging in case you want to skip right to the meat!

The first thing I did was sketch my general design idea out in pencil on a regular sized piece of paper (in pic, bottom right) then trace it onto a transparency (top right).  I used my old-from-university-surplus overhead projector to enlarge and reverse it, and then traced the full sized pattern on freezer paper.

I decided to use the Caryl Fallert piecing method (described previously here and here), so the next step was to ink the pattern and put registration marks all over it so the whole thing could be reassembled.

Here are a couple of shots of my potential fabric palette;  I wound up going with the pale blue for the background and the bottom right green/brown print for the forest floor.

I decided the three biggest tree trunks should be pieced, the largest with geese and the smaller two just string pieced.  In all cases, I tried to keep the light-dark gradient consistent so that the whole quilt would look like it had a unified light source. I just used a mish-mash of light cream, medium brown, and dark brown scraps for the piecing.  For the skinnier, back tree trunks I used one of Caryl Fallert's gradient fabrics to maintain the same light-dark pattern even though the trunks weren't pieced (you can see them hanging off to the left in the bottom picture.

Up next, the leaves and the quilting!