the Next Round

Wow! Thank you so much for your response to my request for ideas last week on What Comes Next for this scrappy medallion quilt. Between blog and instagram comments, I received a ton of interesting ideas:

• Improv circles

• Half square triangles

• Skinny stripes

• Star Web stars from Positivities

• Dear Dottie circles

• Small log cabins

• Pinwheels

• Diamonds

• Flying geese

• Equilateral triangles

So many possibilities! And still, I was having such trouble feeling what I wanted to do. Sometimes an abundance of choices is overwhelming. In The Netherlands they call that “keuzes stress”.

To get myself unstuck, I decided to throw fabrics up on the design wall. I chose medium value fabrics, which would contrast nicely with the gray and low-volume round. This helped me visualize that I wanted the next round to be fairly saturated, rather than low volume. Suddenly I knew that I wanted to sew something improv!

For starters I sewed hourglass blocks. These are constructed like HST blocks, but done twice over. Hourglass shapes felt right because the triple log cabin center of my work-in-progress has a vaguely hourglass vibe.

I have included the same black/blue checkered fabric in each hourglass block. That fabric is visually eye-catching thanks to its darker tones. I hope that this will help the hourglass blocks stand out in the improv round, rather than getting completely lost.

At this point I have sewn two sides of the improv round. It’s looking so cool! I love the wildness of this project. The colors always felt like summer to me and now the patchwork has a busy, brash summery buzz too.