
I have scraps. My scraps have scraps. Seriously, I have several baskets of scraps. And every so often I use them. This project is one of them. But don't confuse a scrap project with a crap project. I have done some fabulous things with scraps. Long-time friends Ed and Marge (John and I taught with Ed at Farragut, and then Ed and I were transferred to Englewood HS together) just bought a home in Wisconsin, and this quilt is for their new place. Marge likes bright and cheery and is fairly traditional. So, what a great opportunity to use some of my scraps and revisit what is perhaps my favorite quilt block of all time - the log cabin. These blocks above have 3" center because I found a stack of blue blocks that were 3.5" Using 2.5" for the width of each log, the finished block is 11.5" square. There are 10 blue-yellow, 10 green-blue, and 10 yellow-green blocks. As I was putting these blocks together, I began to realize that the greens and blues are darker than I intended. So here's how I first put these blocks on the design wall:
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I left two inches between the blocks and auditioned some yellow sashing
in the upper left corner and a green floral sashing in the upper right
corner. Sashing would be more work but would also create a bigger
quilt. This arrangement creates a diagonal design - sort of. Then I began to think about group the blocks to create on-point squares:
Can you see the blue and green clusters? I can't because the yellow dominates. So I decided to go with letter the yellows be the star.
At the first QuiltCon in 2014 I heard Heather Grant give a talk about the growth and development of modern quilting, and she observed that the affordable digital camera has been an absolute game changer. And she's right. What a luxury it is to be able to look at these design changes and be thoughtful about what I want to do next.
My decision - although I will take a day to let all this percolate - is to go with the first design and use yellow to sash and separate these blocks. Although I did think about incorporating some purple:
Maybe it's time to get Marge involved in the decision-making...