I recently got this great Kona Cotton "New Bright Palette" jelly roll. I really like this combination of colors.

Kona Cotton "New Bright Palette"

I haven't seen a design for a jelly roll that I am really want to make, so I started thinking about what else I could do with 2.5 inch wide strips. This set of fabrics reminded me of the thread cabinet in a fabric store. How about a modern spool quilt?

A quick Google possible patterns brought up the great piece on Craftsy's blog: Spool Quilt Patterns.

What a fun collection of modern spool quilts. But none of them were quite what I wanted.

So I decided to make a maquette (a sample), a design technique I learned about in Weeks Ringle's fabulous Craftsy course Designing Modern Quilts. (I highly recommend this course. Weeks is a brilliant teacher and she has a lot to share about use of color and design in Modern Quilting).

Here is my first maquette. It's all right. But is it a spool? If I worked in a cotton mill in the 1800s and used large wooden spools, I would say yes. But it's not the 1800s anymore. So I think it looks like a bit of a mystery.

Adding an extra step makes the design recognizable as a spool. Something my mom would have had in her sewing basket, but definitely a spool.

The block is off kilter on purpose. I want the quilt to look like a jumble of spools. Most Spool Quilts are super tidy looking. I'm looking for something closer to the end of a busy day of sewing!

I grabbed the brown and tan from my scrap bag to make the maquettes. I was looking for a grey but didn't find any in the 2.5 inch scrap collection. I'm still trying to decide if I'm going to use a greys for the spool or a collection of tans.

Will keep you posted on my progress!