Design Wall Monday - Jan 13, 2014

It's "get it done" time for Bonnie's Celtic Solstice.  The final reveal was posted on Jan1, and the final link up is Feb 3. At this point, I just want to be done. Bonnie makes beautiful quilts! But she must have a world more patience than I do.

I knew I didn't want a large quilt (it came in 2 sizes - large, and really large :) ). So, following Bonnie's advice, I made about 1/2 the blocks.  Then, we are supposed to figure out what we want in the end, and make any additional blocks required to get there. Great idea!  So I made "about" 1/2 - cut a few strips, made the segments it would make, and stopped there - no sense having 1/2 a strip cut and not used.

In the end, I had 12 of one block, and 8 of the other.  12 & 12 would have been perfect.  I tried - really I did.  As I sewed those 20 blocks together, I gave myself pep talks about cutting the remaining bits to make the missing blocks.  I was also missing a bunch of border pieces (1/2 a quilt takes way more than 1/2 a border).  But ... the missing pieces are all tri-recs.  I have discovered a deep-seated hatred of tri-recs.  Even though the tri-rec blocks were actually the easiest to assemble at the final stage, I just *really* don't want to cut more of them  And piece more of them.  30 orange tri-recs, and 8 neutral ones - it doesn't seems like that much, but I just can't talk myself into it.

It doesn't help that I really don't like my colours.  Bonnie's quilt is beautiful. But I don't really like scrappy.  So I decided to do this one non-scrappy, because that worked so well for my Easy Street last year. But now that it's done, I really don't like the way the colours are playing.  I think they're too dark - it needs more value changes in there.  But I was browsing Bonnie's linky party and saw a post that didn't look like Bonnie's quilt. I hopped over there, and learned about some alternate layouts for this quilt.

So, I took my 20 blocks, and started playing. 

I found lots of layouts that might look fine - if they were actually finished. But I don't haveenough blocks to go around, and that's how I got here in the first place.

How hard can this be?  20 blocks makes a 4x5 layout, which makes a 36x45" quilt before borders.  I can make that work as a donation quilt, if only the blocks would play nice.

Getting better.

But maybe this one is best.

 A quick count of border blocks, and a redesign there too.  And maybe my celtic solstice will actually see completion.

Drop by Judy's blog for more design walls today.