Setting for Swap Blocks

I've been trying to develop a setting for the blocks I received through the craftster block swap I participated in at the beginning of the year. I've had a basic idea, but was not sure which of the many possible variations I wanted to do. Any of the versions would require more blocks so I started this past weekend by working on more blocks:







By the time I finished these blocks I had landed on a setting idea that I thought I was happiest with, so that's what I worked on the rest of this weekend. None of this is sewn together yet except those strip set borders:



To guide your viewing, let me just say that it is "upside down" in this picture, but I did not rotate it because then the angle looks funky. Also, I can already see that in the center section I will switch the top middle and the right middle blocks (according to where they are in this picture) to balance the colors more. Also, sorry it's dark - it was late evening by the time I got around to this. Keeping those things in mind...

Actually I'm finding I like it more today than I did yesterday, but I'm still going back and forth between liking it and fearing it might be too busy/funky/weird/? I mean it certainly is busy, and the borders and lack of sashing do nothing to calm it down. It does have a certain charm to it, though.

Now wait, I am anticipating that someone somewhere will want to know what it would look like with the strips sets flipped around so the white is on the outside, so I laid that out, too. Try to cleanse your palate before you look at it, though...

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Ok, here it is (and the good news is, this picture is right side up and all the blocks have been moved around):



Hmm...personally I definitely like the first one better. I will continue to mull it over. I have one more block and lots of scraps that will go on the back.

Steps Completed

Here is the finished London Steps top. While I realize it is not something that is everybody's taste, I am pretty happy with it. I enjoyed experimenting with more non-quilting fabrics and mixing lots of different kinds of fabrics, and it has the look I was going for. To finish this I think I am going to combine two quilt ideas into a two-sided quilt, so I will be soon be working on another "top" for the back of this.



I am now working as a teacher's assistant in a pre-K classroom at a public school. This is still not my long term final destination job, but as jobs go it's a definite step up from substitute teaching, and I'm enjoying it so far. It has put a limit on my sewing time, I think mainly because it's been taking me longer to think about and transition between projects. I've had other jobs where I actually thought about sewing projects at work and came home ready to work on them, but so far I find I don't have time to let my mind wander while corralling three and four-year-olds all day. I actually kind of like the fact that the job absorbs me while I'm doing it. It has made me realize, though, how much thinking I actually do about quilts before and while I work on them, and that thinking time is an essential part of the process.

As a bit of an aside, flipping through my Hancock's of Paducah catalog I notice they are selling Gee's Bend quilt kits with a pattern to make a Gee's Bend style quilt, and a fabric line called Gee's Bend solids. I admit my initial reaction to that is not a positive one, given that patterns, quilts, and fabric lines seem so far from the things I love about Gee's Bend. Am I being narrow minded? Maybe it's just a way to make the aesthetic more accessible to people who have trouble working in a liberated way? Maybe it's positive because it's ostensibly making money for Gee's Bend (says they "partnered with the Gee's Bend Quilter's Collective). What do you think?