I love the name of Kerra Job of Live.Love.Sew‘s pattern, Lazy Longhorn. She is a cattle rancher’s wife, so she knows a bit about Longhorns.  However, my dad was a Texas Aggie through and through. He always said we could go to any college that we wanted except…..University of Texas. Fast forward many years later, my son is there and my brother lives in Austin, Texas and has really no other choice but to be a fan of UT.

So when I saw this pattern, I knew I had to make it. My dad would get a kick out of it being called Lazy, but at least I didn’t use traditional UT colors.

I wanted to something a bit more funky, so I choose a floral from Lella’s Boutique’s newest fabric line, Little Miss Sunshine. It is a yummy coral color. From there, I choose  a variety of oranges to pinks.

This is the part I love about quilting, mixing all those cool fabrics. Choosing just 10 fabrics was a bit difficult for me, I usually like at least 50different combinations.

Who would have thought but I ended up with a range of fabrics from Lella Boutique to Zen Chic to Chloe’s Closet to Amy Ellis to Jen Kingwell.

Usually I lay the finished blocks on the floor and re arrange them, stretching and turning as if I were playing a game of TWISTER all by myself. Then I have to sew them all together. If I leave the blocks on the floor they are an open invitation for the dogs to make themselves right at home.

I don’t know why I haven’t thought about this before, but I used one of each of the fabrics to decide in what order I would put the blocks. I played around with the balance of color, value and design. I didn’t want all the oranges to be together. I couldn’t put the busy or geometric prints all together.

I rearranged a few times until it was pleasing to my eye. No great right or wrong way to do it, only a matter of my own personal preference. Once I decided on my favorite, I only have to keep the small swatches in order to use as my guide when I am ready to join the blocks.

Do you have a favorite placement of the fabrics?
Here are 3 options side by side.

Version 1, 2 or 3 ?

Much like playing the game of twister, color is all about balance. Do your eyes hurt yet?

This is much like going to the eye doctor… Tell me which one can you see better… 1 or 2, 1 or 2?
I always have to have him do it over again and again just so I can make sure.

Here is another option. Look at the fabrics in Grey scale. Is the version you picked in the picture above, the same here? By taking all the color out of the picture, it lets your eyes concentrate more on the value (dark and light) of the fabrics. 9 times out of 10, if you are happy with the value placement, you will be happy with the balance of color. In quilting as in life, I guess the key is to finding the right balance.

I’ve got to get back to sewing these lazy longhorns, they are not going to sew themselves.