Friday, May 22, 2009

Floral Shoo Fly

Here are eleven of the blocks I made to add to the 31 I already had for my floral Shoo Fly quilt top:


My blocks tended to be brighter and darker than those I started with. Which made it a real challenge to distribute values and colors evenly across the surface of the quilt. This didn't help either:


I did finally come up with a layout I could live with. There are places where I would make slight changes if I could but I'm more committed to including as many of the original blocks as possible. As it was I left three out of the top, and they were all made by someone else.


Once I had the blocks sewn together I discovered an issue I could not live with. Even as I was sewing the blocks together I thought I must have turned a couple the wrong way around. Did I really intend to put this yellow and this peach block side by side? Yuck! It hurts my eyes!


When I downloaded the pictures I'd taken I discovered what had happened. I was laying the blocks out on my bed, and even on that surface I was running out of room. To compensate I had overlapped the last couple of rows of blocks. The peachy block was barely visible amongst its' neighbors.


I let it rest overnight. Come morning I knew I would have to do something to correct the situation. The peach block had been made by someone else so I chose to remove the yellow block. I felt very fortunate to find a softer yellow floral print in my stash that was absolutely perfect. I don't have a lot of floral prints to begin with, and finding the right color to slide into that hole quadrupled the challenge. You'll have to wait to see the change because I don't have access to the camera at the moment. Trust me, it's a big improvement. :- )

9 comments:

  1. Hi Sue, love the quilt. The energy is good. I'm not a floral fan either, and own very few. A couple have come in as gifts and they languish unloved and unused. I think you've done a great job with your blocks. I see what you mean with the peach and yellow. Either by itself would be ok, just not together. Good catch! You're up and running at the Orphan Train. If anything needs correcting, let me know. *VBS* Big hugs, Finn

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  2. It's always a challenge to use blocks made by a variety of people, but it's kind of fun, too. This is looking good!

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  3. good for you to work this out and come up with a solution...looking forward to seeing your change

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  4. Lovely quilt - sorry about the OOPS - I would have changed it out, too.

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  5. this quilt looks great. i have never seen a complete shoo-fly quilt - only one block as part of a sampler - it is really effective. i mix up my blocks when sewing too, no matter how much care i take with the laying out.

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  6. Your quilt looks beautiful. Good for you for catching and fixing something that would have bothered you otherwise.

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  7. Great prints in the quilt--it's like a flower bed.

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  8. Don't you hate that! You've done a WONDERFUL job, I love the quilt! I like that you didn't put in any sashing, so the blocks run together. You must be proud!

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  9. I always end up with something not quite right! Most of the time I just accept it but occasionally it just has to be corrected. Will be back to see what you've done to change it.

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