Picnic in plaid

I hope that you had a nice weekend. Elora, Aart and I went to an art festival in the park to enjoy the nice weather. Today it’s rainy again, so I am grateful for that weekend reprieve. Onward to a new week of patchwork and inspiration!

Now that I am finished with my wonky star blocks, I can work out a design for this picnic blanket on my design wall.

Here is my basic idea - the combination of dark, repeating prints and the wonky star grids. I have a bunch of green and blue fabrics to fill in the spaces between. Let’s see how that works - - -

To keep the original grids prominent, I used only medium value fabrics for the filler squares. The medium value fabrics are lighter than the dark deer print and darker than the wonky star backgrounds. How fun that, as a result, the work looks rather like plaid! The medium value fabrics seem to overlap to create the dark deer prints.

That outer round of low volume green and blue fabrics is added so that this picnic blanket is generously-sized. I like how that low volume round frames the center square. Everything feels very tidy, just as I imagine that the gift-recipient would like.