It's a 'Block' party up in here!!!

My City Quilter class started this week..... LLLOOOVVEEEDDD it!!

We started out talking Quilting in general. The instructor is very nice and stressed that quilting was a hobby and there was no such thing as a bad quilt.
She went on to talk about the most basic aspects of truing up your fabric and cutting strips (most of the blocks we will be building in class will consist purely of strip cut fabric.)
We practiced strip cutting and sewing the 'scant' 1/4" seam... which is harder than I'd thought it would be... I'm a notorious 'wavy seam' sewer... so I'm thinking mastering the tiny straight seam will actually end up helping me in my garment construction too!
Eventually, we went out into the store to make our fabric purchases for our blocks... our finished quilt will consist of four 8" square blocks of varying designs.... variations on the 'Log Cabin' and the 'Puss in the Corner' (...I've already decided that, as I want my quilt to be very symmetrical and a bit subdued, I'm going to do all 4 blocks using a 'Log Cabin' design.)... Anyway, I'll spare you the gory details of losing 30minutes of my life trying to pick out 1 1/2 yards of fabric, but I did finally settle on these three monotone grey, black and 'dirty bath water' white (I know, I know, but somehow it works...) prints. I'm going for a kind of Asian-inspired look, so I shyed away from really high contrast color combinations within the blocks themselves. As I said, I want it all to look kind of monotone and symmetrical, but I think I will add pops of color with the borders and the back ground fabrics...
Anyway, this is the result of my first attempt at Block building...

.... Its not EXACTLY square and, now that it's put together, I'm not 100% in love with the print placements. I think the center print is n0t quite intense enough to compete with the grey ground fabric... but for my first actual block its not TOO bad.

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Since I had a half day this past Friday, I decided to head over to B&J Fabrics in the Garment District.
I've been thinking about new sewing projects that I want to tackle this summer. After doing some research on what fashion and color trends are coming around this summer, I've focused on Color Blocking. I'm really loving these print blocked pieces...
.... these two are Jean Paul Gautier

This one is from Micheal Kors...

Love it!

Then I saw this cute little number from Missoni...... and thought about B5211 that I made, like, 3 times last summer!

With the summer color trends of neutrals and greys, falling right in line with my own preferred color choices, I found cute set of prints...

And since I have quilting and fabric piecing on the brain, I had the bright idea of piecing the fabric together BEFORE I cut the pattern pieces.

Then I could layout the patterns in the optimal manner, instead of trying to dissect the pattern and cutting out all the individual pieces.... But, past as prelude, my 'bright ideas' don't always pan out the way I'd like... But its not like THAT ever stops me!

Holla!