i'll tumble for ya...

I've had "quilt for Emma" on my project list forever. I've been collecting fabrics (over fifty different prints  initially, but only about thirty-six made the final cut) but couldn't decide what pattern to make. While wandering around Flickr the other day, I spied a number of tumbler quilts and remembered I had borrowed Tara's tumbler die a looooong time ago. (Sorry I've been hoarding it, friend. You can have it back soon!)

I got a Go Baby fabric cutter for Christmas and finally brought it out for its inaugural run! I started by buzzing through only two layers of fabric and speedily cranking the handle. Totally not the way to go. After a few fits and starts, I discovered that six layers of fabric went through really nicely as long as I cranked the handle very slowly. Despite the slow turning of the handle, it was still way faster to use the fabric cutter than if I had hand cut each tumbler with a template.

I've been playing with quilt designs and whether or not to use a background neutral. I didn't want this quilt to be your typical scrappy tumbler, I wanted more definition and bigger chunks of the same print. These are the options I've narrowed it down to...what do you think?

These are bows:

These are beads:

Rows of bows (with Kona Bone in between):

Rows of beads:

And finally, nested bows and beads: