A group of my friends decided, as a challenge, to each make a version of Kim Diehl‘s pattern, Pie in the Sky, found in her book Simple Comforts.  The challenge was to make the quilt only with fabrics which were in our stash–newly purchased fabric was not allowed (of course this meant that one of our group went right out and purchased fabric, lol.)  Since the quilt was in a country/civil war reproduction ‘palette’ I was afraid that it would be dark and brown, colors which I find difficult to work with.  However I noticed right away that she had oranges and yellows in the quilt and that they ‘brightened’ up the quilt.  How would I choose which fabrics to work with?  EQ7 made it easy.  I sketched the block in EasyDraw, then I set them in a quilt with the sashes and sashed border.  Next it was time to choose fabrics.

At first I thought I would try a blue and cream color scheme.  One of the other members of our group chose this scheme.  Her quilt is beautiful and I was really tempted to follow, but in the end I wanted something a little different.  I was so happy to try it out on the computer rather than deciding halfway through sewing that I wanted something different.  My next experiment was to add some greens and purples to the design:

I thought this version was very, very dark in spite of the light stars.  I looked again at Kim Diehl’s version–she had yellows, so I tried this:

Hmmm, not quite what I was looking for–this version looked very brown and dark to me.  I needed something to ‘spice’ it up.  Kim Diehl added some brights and other ‘pops’ of color.  I tried some lighter and brighter fabrics:  cheddars, greens, reds, and blues.  I’m so happy with my results.  My final design was the following:

Tomorrow I’ll show you the finished quilt, in the meantime, here is a sneak preview: