A Method to the Madness

Marny......I have been working on a Pretty in Pink quilt from Heather Mulder Peterson's Livin' Large.    Sixty eight blocks are ready to fill sixty four spaces.  This is a good thing (now that the blocks are done) because it will allow me more flexibility in the arrangement.

Seventeen fabrics were chosen to start with.  The blocks come in two orientations.  So I have two of each orientation from each of the seventeen fabrics.  Hence the four stacks of blocks.

Lots of blocks.  Maybe you can see that the blocks are yellow, green, blue, pink, and brown.  The brown ones might become a bit of a problem for two reasons.  They are by far the darkest value blocks and there are only two fabrics used in the 8 brown blocks.  We'll see if they add or detract from the quilt.  Hmmmm.

And to avoid confusion between the orientation of the blocks I chose to place a pin in every block of one orientation.

So off to the design wall.  Mine is a 4x8 sheet of lightweight blue construction Celotex covered with Hobbs 80/20 batting.  One pile of each orientation will fill half the 8x8 block layout, leaving two extra.

So that is where I start.  Sixteen different fabrics are placed on the wall.

That was pretty easy.  Now I have to deal with repeat fabrics, and that requires a bit of caution.  You have to keep an eye out for particular fabrics, colors, and values so that the balance does not get thrown off.

 

You can see there are now 4x8 blocks up on the wall (and straddling the floor) with two left out.  The pinks in rows 3, 5, and 6 seemed to team up too much so I made a switch.

On camera it seams a bit green/yellow blocky but I am going to live with it for a bit and decide.  So far the browns seem ok, and will help direct the eye over the whole quilt.  But it is wise to live with the layout for a bit and return to get fresh impressions.

Some Tuesday real soon there will be a completed quilt top!

See you next Tuesday.