I’m working on a lap quilt for my mum. It’s not been coming together well at all! I know what block I want to use – a heart block that looks like Swedish hearts we used to make for the Christmas tree. I was going to use bright rainbow colours on a white background, however my husband knows my mum likes Japanese fabrics so thought using some of my red and blue Japanese fabrics would be nice.
Here are the first blocks; I didn’t feel they were quite right from the start:
I wasn’t understanding what was wrong but knew it was the contrast within the block. My friend Cathy told me a good way to see this; looking at them in black and white reveals what was wrong:
The deep red and deep blue tones were just too close and didn’t bring enough contrast within the block to see the pattern. This would be true with all the reds and blues I had. So I tried adding a medium grey for contrast within the block
This helped a bit, but still didn’t feel right. I attempted to add some more colour:
(BTW I didn’t realise until today that there was something else wrong with half the blocks above; can you spot it?)
Although I liked the blocks, I didn’t like them with the other blocks. So I decided to try playing with just the red and blues, but this time with slight metallic fabrics:
I think these reds would look lovely with the gold. So what to do? Where to go? Keep going with reds and blues? Do it just red/gold or just blue/silver and grey? Do something else entirely?! Grow a beard and go into hiding?!