Monday 4 February 2013

"Earth and Sky" quilt

One of my focus projects for February is to turn some (or all) of my improv blocks (made 2011-2012 in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge over at SoScrappy blog) into a quilt.

I spent quite a long time on Saturday fiddling with different layouts. Because we don’t have many quilts that are suitable for men, I decided to focus on the brown blocks and work around them.

This was the first layout I came up with, using brown, green, teal and blue blocks. I christened it “The Dog’s Breakfast” quilt.
P2020001
Here it is again in black and white – look at those values: all over the place!
is this a dog's breakfast
It didn’t look good in colour and looked even worse in black and white!

I tried other layouts but wasn't happy with any of them and couldn’t be bothered fighting with my camera to take photos (my camera has some issues with batteries, even though I use rechargeable batteries if I turn the camera off – even if I only took two photos – the camera will tell me the batteries are flat! We’ve tested the batteries in other items – it's not the batteries!) 

Every layout I tried was still “a dog’s breakfast”. I even tried setting the blocks on point but that didn’t help. It did, however, give me an idea, which led to the layout I have settled on!
2013 layout finalised
Sorry about the angle, it was the only way I could get it all in! And yes, since I took the photo I've turned that bottom left block in the central blue square to point to wards the centre!
This layout used all my brown improv blocks, and all my brown nine patch and string blocks! Of course, I have more brown scraps so there’ll be more blocks when brown comes up in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.

The name of the quilt is obvious, it comes from the two colours used in this layout. Now you have to use your imagine a little bit. Imagine a light-coloured narrow sashing around the central square, then around the brown square, and separating the top and brown rows from the blue.

What's that? Can’t see it? Well you’ll just have to come back when I’ve made further progress, won’t you? LOL

But for now, I’m off to work on Older Grandson’s birthday present, I have less than two weeks to get it done!

Oh yeah, I’m a bit late but I’m linking this up with Scrap Happy Saturday. Sorry, it’s not purple, Angela, but it is progress!
http://superscrappy.blogspot.com

15 comments:

  1. I think it sounds like you've got some interesting plans - even if you can't say what they are. I'm sure you'll find a way to make it work!

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  2. The browns and blues look great together. It was the greens that didn't fit. Earth and sky - forget about the grass :)

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  3. You are on the right track with the quilt now. Very pretty. Hope the sewing project for grandson w ere my well.

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  4. Final layout looks good. You found a way to tame these boys! I think its a great man quilt.

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  5. I so love looking at quilts from different angles like this. The square in the square really catches my eye!

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  6. I like the layout that you settled on. The blues and browns really do complement one another. Glad you are putting your scrap blocks to good use.

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  7. I like the square in a square layout you came up with. If you had lots of browns you could do a brown/green one too!

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  8. You are a riot!! Dog's breakfast, indeed. Whenever I am working on a quilt I feel is ugly, I'm always surprised that once it's 'framed', it takes on a whole new personna!! I love the final layout. It's perfect.

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  9. I liked the first one. Very modern looking but so is the 2nd version which is nice too.

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  10. Great way to use up your scraps! And you actually got to the layout stage, so congrats. Looking forward to seeing your final flimsy.

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  11. I love blue and brown together. Will write again today once you put up Mr Linky lol XX Kathleen

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  12. I really like your final result. I think the values were just too close for the diagonal lines to be effective. The colour rings are so much nicer.

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  13. The second lay out is great. I love how we can move a few blocks and have a whole new quilt :)

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  14. Love the final layout!! This must be the idea my scrappy horse triggered:)

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