Friday, October 2, 2009

Everybody's welcome to their opinion, and I'd like to hear them

Now that I'm faced with a pile of blocks I don't know what to do with, I'm trying new ideas for completing the Christmas Lights quilt. I pulled out all the best options from EQ and I'm going to include them here. If you have an opinion, please tell me. I'd love some feedback - and I promise I won't call you "mean spirited" if you disagree with me!

This is the quilt as designed:
I think the reason this design didn't grab me is all the red. It seems to hijack the whole quilt. So I rearranged the star blocks in a center cluster radiating out to the corners to give them more emphasis, and liked it better:
Still, there's a lot of red. I thought about re-making the blocks with green, kind of like the green boughs of a Christmas tree, surrounding the bright squares representing the lights. I also just put them on the outer edge, and added plain gold setting squares in the center:
Or, since the red blocks are a reworking of a disappearing nine patch, I tried changing them so there were more four patch squares at the corners for more "lights":
Then, I thought about making all four corners of the disappearing nine patch blocks as half square triangle blocks, keeping the red for contrast, and using a lighter green in those blocks and in the setting squares:
Where these new blocks come together with the star blocks it makes divided half square triangle blocks and a sashing effect around the stars.

I think a lot of these changes have possibilities, it's just whether I want to make more blocks or not. What do you think?

5 comments:

Three Birds Inspired said...

I think you are going to make my head explode!! :) I liked the one with mostly greens...but then I am partial to green.

Shepherdess55 said...

Of these four options I like the fourth (from the top) best but like the newest option best (posted separately).

Becca said...

Top and bottom are my favorites. I've always been to chicken to do a mystery quilt-too scared I won't like it and I can't ever bring myself to work on something I don't love-you're braver than I am!

Tanya said...

I like the setting where the four patch squares are in the corners for more lights.

Linda C said...

I like the one with the golds myself---it is not so crammed with the blocks and seems far less busy! Looks like you are having fun playing with the quilt software.