Design-Wall Monday

This has been a fun week, quilting-wise.  I’m participating in JudyL’s & VickiW’s Fabric Palette Challenge for January.

How NOT to Build a Quilt:  I bought fabrics without a pattern or project in mind.  What was I thinking?  Really…who does that?  I found a batik I fell in love with, and chose some coordinating fabrics, thinking that I would figure it out later.  So I have 3 yards of a border print, 2 1’2 yards of background, a couple of 1-yard cuts and a couple more 1/2-yard cuts.  Try finding a pattern to work with predetermined, semi-random fabric amounts!

I decided this was a good time to dust off EQ7 and design my own quilt.  Okay, that isn’t so easy either.  It took several sessions, but I finally came up with a plan I liked.  It’s easiest to work on EQ (I think) if you play around with alternating two blocks.  I like Irish Chain quilts, so I thought I could use the greens in the Irish Chain blocks, and decided on a star for the open spaces.  Not terribly original, but I like it:


Then I started figuring out the rotary cutting instructions.  The star block worked out great.  The Irish Chain block came out to 2 7/8 strips.  Ooops!  Guess I won’t be using my handy-dandy strip cutter!

Lesson Learned:   I was making 12″ finished blocks.  The star built on a 6×6 grid.  Worked out perfectly.  The Irish Chain block was a 5×5 block, and 12″ divided by 5 isn’t so neat and tidy.  I should have paid attention to the configuration of the blocks I was choosing to make sure they would all play nicely together.

Solution:  I decided I liked the look of the two blocks together.  I like that seams don’t all meet at the same place, reducing thick spots.  I like how the star nestles in and fills the space.  I even like that corners of the star block that become part of the chain are a little smaller.  If I do this one again, I might make them a different color.  So anyway, I cut 2 7/8″ strips.  I figured since that block only required strip sets, that it wasn’t a big deal.

Now that I have some preliminary blocks together, I know it will work.  *whew*

Don’t forget to stop over to JudyL’s blog and see other quilters’ design walls!

–Sue

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