Lars's Stained Glass Quillow Quilt, Revised, and a Game Plan!

So the overwhelming consensus from you guys is that I should go with the design I shared yesterday for Lars's Quillow Ceremony quilt.  I played around with recoloring it in EQ7 again today to make it look more like a stained glass window:

Final Design, Maybe.  68" x 102" XL Twin

The way I had it colored originally, there was too much green (and it was the wrong shade of green), too much black, and I wasn't getting the glowing effect that you see from a medieval stained glass window.  I pulled some photos of medieval stained glass windows off the Internet for color references and went about recoloring my quilt with mostly batik fabrics of varying shades.

Chartres Cathedral Window for Color References

Notre Dame Cathedral (?)

Chartres Again (I think)

To recreate the glowing effect of a stained glass window in a cathedral, I used different shades of each color fabric with the darker shades towards the outer edges of the quilt and lighter shades near the center.  

So, there are two different 24" blocks in this quilt:

Lars's 24" Bear Paw Variation

I'll need six identical Bear Paw Variation blocks like the one above.

Lars's 24" Star Block

I'll also need two full Star Blocks like the one above, each with slightly different coloration, as well as six half Star Blocks and four quarter Star Blocks with different coloration to go around the outside of the center blocks.  There are no sashing or borders in this quilt, but each one of those blocks will be an onerous beast!

I've used a total of 18 different batik fabrics in this design as well as solid black.  EQ7 is calculating that I need a total of about 17 1/2 yards of fabric for this project (that's just the quilt top, not including 6 1/4 yards of backing fabric or the binding fabric), but if I end up paper piecing it I'll need to allow even more fabric for the waste factor.  Although I pulled a lot of my batik fabric images from eQuilter's web site, I probably want to select my actual batik fabrics in person to be sure I'm getting the right shades for the effect I'm trying to create.

I was already poking around on Spoonflower, though, and found two terrific options for the quilt backing:

Trust the Lord Your God by Kristi Duggins, available here

or 

The Lord Is My Strength by Wren Leyland, available here

Does everyone know about Spoonflower?  It's an Internet business based in Durham, North Carolina that does custom digital printing on everything you ever wished you could design yourself: Quilting fabric, apparel fabric, home dec fabric, giftwrap, wallpaper...  Are you excited yet?  Best of all, there's no minimum order and swatches are only $5.  Not only can you design your own fabrics and have them custom printed by Spoonflower, but you can also sell your designs on their web site and earn a commission when someone else orders them.  So if I decide to use Wren Leyland's fabric design for Lars's quilt backing, Spoonflower will pay Wren a commission on my order.  Cool, right?  I've ordered swatches of each of these backing fabrics that I'm considering so I can test launder them before I make a final decision.  After all, I'm a LONG WAY from needing the backing fabric...

Diane suggested setting goals for this quilt to make it more manageable and to ensure getting it done on time, and I think that's a great idea.  I've just made some adjustments to the schedule she proposed: 

• For sanity's sake, I need to finish a couple of my WIPs before I cut into a new project.  The Math Quilt, the Butterfly Bear Paw Quilt, the Jingle Quilt and the Pineapple Log Cabin quilt all need to get finished by the end of September 2017.
• Figure Out Paper Piecing, Print Patterns, Purchase Fabrics by end of October 2017
• Center Blocks Pieced by end of April 2018
• Partial Outer Blocks Pieced by end of August 2018
• Entire Top Pieced by end of October 2018
• Embroidered quilt label, personalization designed & stitched by end of January 2018
• Quilting Completed by March 2019
• Bound and Labeled by end of May 2019
• Ready to Gift at Quillow Ceremony in early June 2019

I know that I don't have as much sewing time from October through the end of January because that's when my interior design business tends to heat up, plus I have holiday preparations and Christmas caroling throughout November and December.  Anyway, it's only a plan, and it can always be revised, right?  Wish me luck.

Meanwhile, I've spent way more time in front of my computer over the past couple of days than I've spent in my studio behind my sewing machines, so that's where I'm headed after a nice, hot shower.  I've been stricken with the most obnoxious, unseasonable stuffy nose and sore throat right at the kickoff to summer vacation!

Have a wonderful weekend, everyone, and happy stitching!