Hadley Challenge Spotlight- Lori Hashizume

The Hadley prints remind me of the 1940s swing era. I wanted to do something jazzy to reflect the music of the period and chose Denyse Schmidt’s Any Way You Slice It for inspiration.

 

I began by cutting random width strips and sewing them onto 6 inch paper squares, improvising along the way and incorporating 5 different solids to make the prints stand out more. When I assembled the blocks, the result was a little loud and dizzying.

To tone it down, Michelle offered me a bag of off-white scraps she purchased earlier from Denyse Schmidt. Several people suggested solid cream sashing and borders, but I thought it might then look more like Between the Lines, a somewhat orderly design by comparison. I didn’t want to lose the jazz vibe so I sewed off-white strips together and used them to replace a few of the colorful squares.  

 

The result is Restoration Swing, named after the pages of the detested Restoration Hardware catalog that was recently mailed to customers in a bulky 17-pound bundle and which I used for paper piecing.  

P.S. Lori sewed the quilt top entirely on her newly acquired Singer Featherweight. How fun!