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