A Yellow Runs Through It

Remember this?

I decided to bring this project to the fore as something to work on after my "fresh" eyes were used up every morning. 

Morning quilting has been down the center of the vine (branching into the leaves and stems), in the sepals of the flower buds, and within the center of the open flowers, followed by several days of burying threads.

But back to the string blocks: I'd never used fabric as a foundation before--I've always used phone book pages. I was worried that fabric as a foundation would shift too much, or bunch, or add too much bulk, or come up with other ways to frustrate me, so I never ventured into that arena. Until now.

Just to be on the safe side, I ironed and starched the twenty-four 10" squares of cotton I'd set aside to use in this project. From there it was the routine matter of pinning the yellow strip down a diagonal and securing it with a light and dark fabric strip along each side. Easy-peasy. 

Then I got to the end of the 10" squares, and discovered I had one yellow strip left! Somehow I had gone from being short two (and having to create those from scraps) to having an excess of one? Had I accidentally sewn a strip onto two squares? Nope: I apparently can't count straight sometimes!

Having 25 blocks provides the opportunity for a 5x5 layout, or as a signature block on the back of a 4x6 quilt, or an extra should something go horribly, terribly wrong, so I went with it. There happened to be one more 10" square in the cotton sheeting scraps, but rather than starch it too, I decided to just iron it and see how it acted compared to all the other foundations. (I pinned the corner so I could monitor it as I progressed.)

I'm most pleased to learn and share that starching, while nice, is unnecessary. The fabric blocks behaved beautifully with very little skewing, buckling, or other distortion, starched or not. In a matter of a couple of days, my design wall was filling with setting ideas.

Classic diamonds on the left, zig-zag setting on the right. Borders being auditioned too, just in case.

I had 26 corners cut from halved 3" squares of Y2K M&M fabric (I found an extra 3" square with the project scraps, so my 25th/surprise block was taken care of),

and 24 cut from five of the primary and secondary colors (all but yellow). They seemed to get lost in the zigzag pattern. I can see where corners of yellow or any other bright color would be effective in the zigzag layout, but that's not what I was working with here. So diamonds it was.

Next decision: 5x5 or 4x6 (computer mock-ups below)?

 

Meh on the 5x5. I'd've wanted to force it into a rectangle by applying borders, so why make extra work for myself? I'll use one of the blocks with the pieced yellow strip on the back, instead.

Final decision: dark 4x6 or light 4x6? 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Those corners are getting lost in the dark diamonds, so I chose to group the lights for 6 complete diamonds. At least there'd be six spots in which my idea for a colorful center might have a chance to be seen.

Stay tuned for the next post, in which I discover another advantage to fabric foundations, and find a new use for an old tool.