something new on the design wall.

Some of you may remember when I started sewing a rainbow? (see back here for details). I spent heaps of time digging deep for fabrics that read as one colour. As I started sewing them all together, very roughly in ROYGBIV order, I just wasn't feeling the love :(

Everything went into the cupboard for a bit, and when I pulled out all the little piles of HSTs this week I decided I needed a change of direction. When I was making a couple of corn and bean blocks for my folk sampler I had wondered what a whole quilt of them would look like. Then I spotted Leah's latest colourful scrappy corn & beans over on insta, and that sealed the deal!

So now I'm making **corn and bean blocks, also known as the 'northwind' block. I made a test block, adjusted my measurements, trimmed my block to 12". 

There's lots of different layout possibilities, see above pic. As you can see though, my original collection of HSTs were all very definite light/dark & light/medium combos, all way, way too stark. (maybe that's why things didn't gel for me with my original plan?)

Following along with Leah's process, I'm playing with the values a bit more. It'll be controlled scrappy, using lots of different, unrelated fabrics & sewing them into colour value groups.

Hopefully that will create some kind of shifting value effect across the quilt top without the value contrast being too stark in any one block. 

Hmm-m-m- it's a bit of work admittedly. I'm keeping many of those early HST combos, but there has been some unpicking too! And a bit of questioning if a particular fabric is light, light medium or medium light?  I'm trying to make quick decisions, and I'm happy if there's some blurring of the lines a little. 

The jury's still out on my final layout, but here's a few design wall progress pics ... 

**I was keen to find out more about this block & it's various names,

and I found this comment from Jodi at tales of cloth

... I was amused this week to discover that 'Corn and Beans' can only be called Corn and Beans if it's made from yellow and green! The block was first published by the Ladies Art Company, who sold mail order patterns, somewhere between 1890 and 1906. Then along came Carrie Hall in the 1930s and claimed that if the colours weren't yellow and green, then the block was named Duck and Ducklings, or Hen and Chicks, or Shoo Fly, or Handy Andy.