Dithering

Now that the blocks are getting assembled and some problematic "neutrals" are being called into play, I'm taking a close look at things before they go too far. This medium-orange-ish log had me on the fence--could I convince myself it was light enough to count as a neutral, or did it lean dark?

I built out the block on the design wall to see how it might play with subsequent rounds of logs.

I took pictures (obviously), squinted hard at it, considered creating a black & white version of this shot, then realized in the time it took me to do all that, I could have ripped out the 3-1/2" of stitching and replaced that log with something that didn't bother me at all!

So I did that instead. 1441 logs cut, and counting.

Some other problematic fabrics may be rearing their ugly heads soon:

Ah well, it's a learning process. I've never been entirely comfortable trying to figure out where novelty fabrics fall, or what to do with medium hues. With this, I'm working on overcoming my initial doubts about my decisions, as well as letting myself change course when needed. Lots of camera work helps--it allows me to "step back" and see things from a larger distance, and I can view anything in black & white when needed.

For instance:

I really didn't expect the funky black & white pattern to read as dark as it does (left section, top row, third column / second row, second column, etc). The barnyard chicken fabric doesn't always read light enough either, no matter how much fussy-cutting I do to get just the white and grey chickens in the log. The piano keys were also a surprise.

So, if the ones I was sure would read as light have proven to be unworkable, it's fairly obvious to me now that I might as well cut my losses and replace those 'neutrals' I'm questioning already. Far easier to rip out a 1-1/2" seam than to deconstruct several rows after the fact (which I'll be doing to at least 8 of these blocks)!