Salvaging my original Sparks test

As I wrote about last December,  my fabric choices to test my Sparks pattern were not great.  The yellow fabric I chose did not have enough contrast against the background, and it was too weak compared to the other two colours.  The result was that the top third of the quilt faded away and the whole design looked unbalanced. 

Over the last couple of weeks I ripped seams to remove the sashing and reorder the blocks.  I ended up removing most of the yellow blocks to give them a smaller role in the design.  Removing two rows of blocks on point shortened the quilt and made it square, but I had enough background fabric leftover to add background to the top and bottom to lengthen the quit again.  It's not quite as long as the original design, but it will do.

Enough chatter.  Time for visuals!

You can see the design in the yellow blocks still fades away compared the red and orange elements, but having fewer blocks and sandwiching them between the stronger blocks make them more of a secondary element and the fade isn't so jarring.  

Original version on the left, redesigned version on the right

I had to make an extra orange block to make this work, but I goofed and ended up with the wrong combination of units. I made more units to fix that, then figured I might as well make a few more to use up  the extra goof bits.  I also had a few extra red units.  I'm not sure why I had extra red last fall, but I decided I might as well make a few more to finish an extra red block as well.

The eight yellow blocks I removed, as well the extra orange and red blocks, are going to end up in the backing.  Of curse the yellow on the background will be more subtle than in the EQ mockup below, but it's on the back so I can live with it.  I just want to use up the pieces.

The column of blocks on point is intentionally off center so there won't be a need to obsess about centering the backing.

Here's a fun and surprising fact: tossing these block in the backing is not going to  result in buying less yardage to finish the back.  I did the math, was sure I must be mistaken, checked the math again, talked it out with the hubby to see if he saw any errors in my math, and confirmed that I will buy the same amount as if I planned a plain backing.  

Why?  Well, I need fabric for the setting triangles to place the blocks on point.  Because of the size squares I need to cut those large triangles, I'm going to end up with large leftover chunks of fabric.  So, I'm not going to use as much of the fabric as if I made a plain back, but I'll have to buy as much.  There will be leftovers for the scrap bin.

In case you were wondering, setting the blocks straight instead of on point wouldn't help much on that front, because one width of fabric plus the width added by the blocks wouldn't be quite as wide as I need the back to be.  I'd have to buy extra yardage to make up the difference anyway so I decided to go ahead and make the back more interesting by setting the blocks on point. On point is wider than straight set, so the blocks plus one width of fabric cut into two smaller uneven widths A and B to make the side panels will give me the required backing width.

That was a mouthful.  It's simpler in fabric than in words!

This project has progressed as far as it can until I can go to the quilt shop for more backing fabric.  The blocks and some sashing will be waiting.

Would you find  a tutorial on pieced quilt backs useful?  Do you have any particular questions related to quilt backs, plain or pieced?

Happy quilting,

Joanne

Presenting Sparks

I'm still thinking about a new layout for the red/orange/yellow quilt I was ripping at the end of my previous post.  I think I have a solution.  It's not fabulous, but it's at least better than the original.

While I continue to ponder that, I thought you might like to see what the original design looks like when I don't mess up the colour values.  

None of the sparks disappear in this one!  I'm not sure there's as much color variation as I originally envisioned, but I still like it.  Subtle can work too :). The three prints are all from the Playful Posies collection from Island Batik.

The orange print is my favourite of the three.  

It was tricky to get a pretty styled photo showing all three fabrics.  This was the best I managed.  It's not very well styled!

This looks prettier but one of the prints is hidden.

After I finished the quilt and sent it to Island Batik to photograph for their fabric catalog,  I had to publish the pattern with this quilt on the cover.  This, of course, is when a design change occurred to me.  I think this is a stronger design:

What's a designer to do?  Include both in the final pattern, of course!  The tweak is super simple, just moving units around in the block construction, so fabric amounts are the same.  That worked out well!

I'd love to play around with a dark background, with shades of blue, or maybe blue and teal.  Or maybe blues at the top and bottom and a bright contrast in the middle?  So many options, so little time...  What would you try?

I'm off to play with the red/orange/yellow alternate layouts. 

Happy quilting,

Joanne

PS: Get your copy of Sparks in my Etsy shop now.

Why I didn't sew in August

Well, it's been a minute!  I've been quiet on the blog.  After my last post, I enjoyed a two-week vacation in British Columbia to visit family, who have all migrated from Nova Scotia to the opposite coast.  

Yes, daughter hugs are the best!  Hiking Dog Mountain in Seymour Provincial Park outside of Vancouver (below) ranks pretty high up there too.  

We also enjoyed the Malahat Skywalk on Vancouver Island (below).

The skywalk may not look like much, but check out the view from the top:

I'm lacking photos of Victoria, as well as Sydney Island where we spent a lovely day at my brother and sister-in-law's cottage.  We of course enjoyed visiting with mom and dad as well.

I came home to large pattern orders (yay! but a lot of folding, bagging, packing and shipping).  That was followed by bookkeeping, design proposal deadlines and a writing deadline.  I will say, after a lovely two weeks away, it took a little while to get my head back into work mode, but I finally managed and cleared the decks so I can now turn on the sewing machine and play with fabric for the first time in a couple of months.

I need to choose what to work on.  Here's what was on the design wall at the end of July:

I think it needs a wide red border. That will require a trip to the quilt shop.  I'm all out of red yardage.  Maybe I could cobble together a scrappy border, but I rather think it needs a calmer, uniform border.  

My other top choice requires lots of communing with my seam ripper.

Almost a year ago I put this project away because of a misadventure with colour value, which I got around to sharing here in December.  I ended up making the pattern cover quilt with different fabrics (more about that one coming soon) but this original attempt has been nagging me for a finish.  I started ripping seams to remove sashing so I can rearrange the blocks and hopefully save most of this work and fabric.

Here's the last photo I took last fall.  You just can't see the design in those yellow blocks.  It was even worse once I added sashing.

I'm almost done ripping seams.  When that's done, I'll remove or move most of the yellow blocks and add wide background top and bottom borders.  We'll see how that goes.  Maybe the discarded yellow blocks will end up in the backing.

I think I'll finally turn on the sewing machine tomorrow to make progress on one of these projects.  

How was your summer?  A sewing desert, or a productive few months?

Happy quilting,

Joanne