still undecided

i went to the quilt shop the other day and met my friend who is a good quilter there. i brought along all my squares and we set about looking for the right fabric to make the solid squares for the quilt. after trying white, black, grey, green, another grey, we just could not find the right one. we both liked grey but there was not a true grey fabric to be found. they were either too blue or too pink.

then we asked some ladies who happened to be in the shop, and they agreed they grey we had was not the right grey, then one of the ladies suggested this fabric. now this is not a solid grey, and this image from the internet is not indicative of the true colour, but this patterned grey fabric against the squares looked pretty good. i was shocked. i was not prepared for a pattern fabric as the background, but the pattern is so small that really from a step back it looked grey.  

so having decided i liked this fabric i then set about doing the maths to see how much i needed to finish the quilt. it turns out i need 3 meters!  this is a lot, and unfortunately there was only 1.4 meters of this fabric left. i could try and buy it online, but basically i am left undecided. 

the lady who works at the quilt shop suggested this linen fabric for the squares. i must say the colour grey worked with the quilt. again the colour on this screen is not exactly right, but i was unsure about mixing cotton with linen on a quilt especially with large blocks of linen making up 50% of the quilt.

so i bought half a meter of the linen and my friend suggested i set myself the task of making a mini half scale of the quilt. 

this is the layout of the 2.5 inch squares, my quilt in the end will be 4.5 inch squares.  the layout looked pretty good, so i sewed it together.

sewing the linen and cotton was ok, the cotton has more stretch which i can see being good and bad. the linen did not stretch at all making it harder to line up the edges maybe.

i am going to quilt it together tomorrow, in the cross pattern, just to see what it looks like and how the linen actually quilts. then wash it to see how  it wears. the final quilt i am going to make will be used on my bed so it needs to wash well.

then i decided since i am making this mini quilt (probably for the dog) i would make the other side to scale but with black cotton. black is the colour i naturally choose for most things. i am comfortable with it. people have said its too dark for this quilt, but i am not so sure, i think it could be a good option. so this is the back of my test quilt. I will quilt it tomorrow too. 

then maybe i can decide what fabric to go with and start the big project. does anyone have any tips for sewing with linen. it's not 100% i think it is 55 linen 45% cotton, but still different from the 100% cotton.

any opinions about the black, or the linen or the 

grey mini dot?

who knew quilting was so complex. all i wanted was a relaxing task and a new bed cover.