how's your aspen?!?

about those leaves...

my original thought was to make the leaves as black silhouettes, with cream fabric for the background ... so ... half black and half cream ... but Michael Myson's quilt was way too light for me with 50% cream and i ended up adding those darker borders... 

what to do? what to do? what to do?

i decided on gold leaves with a grey background ... which, of course, meant that the leaves HAD to be aspen leaves, right?!? 
the colorado rockies are KNOWN for their aspen gold!

i couldn't find a pattern for paper-pieced aspen leaves... 
i already knew that from when i had to draft leaves for Awesome! 
but i wasted a few hours searching the Net anyway...

and then i took out the graph paper and started drafting my OWN 5 inch finished aspen leaf... 

well... 

that was the plan, anyway... 

it took three attempts, but i finally managed a leaf that i can live with...

destined for trash ... destined for the orphan blocks bin ... destined for greatness - bwah ha ha!!!

the first one was very, very wonky ... the second one was okay, but had no room for error ... so i copied the second pattern at 105% and tried again for the third leaf ... it is pretty much what i was looking for...

this is the linen tea towel...

1978 ... it was a very good year

the plan is to surround the towel which is only 11" x 22" with some skinny borders, and then add a border of 5 inch aspen leaves... 

followed by a couple more little borders of some kind

and then some 7 inch aspen leaves... 

the 7 inch leaf pattern was much easier to draft because i'd already made the mistakes on the 5 inch leaves ... and i decided to test it with fabric from the Old School Saturday Sampler...

first try - very, very close call

it is a 9 inch finished block with the added borders ... but the leaf is just barely 7 inches - so this one will have to be copied at 105% too cuz i am NOT drawing it out again...

it snowed like a sonuvagun last saturday and we didn't make it to our monthly meeting for the Old School Saturday Sampler BOM ... which is okay cuz i wasn't gonna make their blocks whatever they might be anyway ... so i was able to test the pattern and complete a BOM block at the same time - woo hoo!!! 
  sometimes being snowed in is a good thing...

today the sky is wild and billowy ... we went to The Quilt Store to celebrate their birthday and spent a bunch of money we don't have ... i should be piecing little aspen leaves but i think i'll just take some ibuprofen and take a nap instead cuz i have been feeling puny all week...