I’m going hot and cold on this quilt at the moment, in fact more chilly than warm to be honest…
It’s my first truly scrappy quilt, all the colour fabrics are from my scrap boxes with a couple of fat quarters for background. I’ve got boxes of coloured scraps, but not that many light enough to be a background piece. It’s a free QAL by Pat Sloan from earlier in the year, or it may even be last year. Either way, all the patterns are there for free on her website.
This week I stitched set 4 blocks. I made the mistake of not looking at my earlier blocks first as they were tidied away in my block book…
First I made two little stars using a soft grey background leftover from my coming home quilt…
They were fiddly as they’re only 6″ square, but I’m happy with those.
Next up were four blocks of Goose and Gosling blocks, these were even more fiddly due to all those triangles! I like doing half square triangle blocks as the square stays stable, I really don’t like having to cut the fabric down the diagonal before it’s stitched! There’s too much room for movement! I drowned it in Best Press and it seemed to work! For these I used a plain cream background and on these blocks I think it looks OK…
Next up was a 12″ block with a star and a mini pinwheel. It stitched easily (apart from those pesky triangles again!) and I was pleased with how it turned out, nice and crsp I thought…
… until I got the other blocks out on my design wall and put them altogther!
OK so this isn’t the final lay out but those blocks with a cream background stand out a mile, I hadn’t remembered the others having such busy backgrounds. I hoped it might bring a bit of calm, but I think the big block in particular looks too stark! I think I will get away with the smaller blocks, especially as they are in pairs on the final layout. My one saving grace is that the pinwheel block is a standard 12″ block, so if needed I can always add an orphan block in, do a swop..
I think next time I’ll just stick to a simple half square triangle scrappy quilt!
thecraftycreek 
Do you think a few sashings would warm you up? I think the blocks are great, mixing up the backgrounds makes it very interesting and fun! Good luck, keep going. I’ll be looking for the final layout. It’s gonna be great!
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I’m not sure what sashings would do to the measurements, I’ll have to do some careful maths 🙂
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I think you will definitely get away with the smaller blocks but I see what you mean about the larger one. Maybe, once you have all the other blocks done, it will blend in more but, if not, you have a block for your parts department as I’m sure it will come in useful somewhere down the line.
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Idea for the stark one would be to ink in some small circles onto that background fabric just enough to muddy its feel. I did that on a tessellated huge table runner when two fabric that were neighbors and did not play well together. It helped delineate them from each other. I used a red ink pen and drew small ooooo’s all over it. Just a thought to change that starkness and allow you to play with it. Lol.
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Now there’s an idea, thanks
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lovely overall view! gives us a proper idea of how tiny some of these pièces really are!
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I’m with Eileen; I recently ‘calmed’ a couple of overly bright sections on a block by adding a design with Sharpies. It worked a treat. The other thing that would help would be to replace just the 4 corner squares on the 12 inch block with a busier fabric. I think it might be a mistake to make all the backgrounds the same value of busyness as the quilt would then run the risk of being dull. Light and dark, plain and busy, you need them all to keep the eye moving and interested. It’s looking good, and I hope you persist.
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I think I need to invest in some sharpies! I’ll wait til I’ve done a few more blocks and see how the overall quilt looks 🙂
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I think you can make this work beautifully Margaret. It seems like you have either stark backgrounds, or very busy backgrounds. I love the sharpy idea; is it also time for some backgrounds that aren’t quite as busy?
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