Wednesday, October 12, 2016

Controlled Chaos

If you visited last week, you may remember I was struggling with chaotic busy-ness and wild color in my Bento Box project, and I asked for input and suggestions. You came through and I thank you all for your comments and advice.

Here's the photo from last week:

I decided to go with matched pairs of block parts. While I was at Sew Me STL this past weekend I was able to sew the blocks together, and I ended up with 32 blocks.

Since I've been home I've been playing with layouts on the wall. I want a 4 x 5 layout, 20 blocks; this top with borders will finish at least 56 x 68". Since I have more blocks than I need, I can omit some.

After much experimentation, I made some decisions:

  • I chose to feature the blocks with a lot of coral in them, and leave out most of the blocks with green in them. 
  • I set the coral-edged blocks in diagonals. Likewise the yellow-edged blocks. 
  • I set them lights-together/darks-together. This arrangement makes for strong value contrast along the diagonal, and the light areas give the eye somewhere to rest. 

Here are the blocks on my design wall now, along with the border print I plan to use.

Sorry about the bad lighting in today's photos. It's raining here today and I had to use the flash. The coral is actually not quite so red in real life.

So what do you think? Should I add more green back in? Should I replace those two green blocks with some that don't have green, and omit green entirely? Should I go back to an alternate light/dark arrangement instead of the one that makes plusses?


Linking up with Sew Fresh Quilts and My Quilt Infatuation

9 comments:

  1. I like your layout a lot and would probably try to eliminate the green blocks, if possible. It is much calmer than last week!

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  2. This layout does create several different visual focus points depending on how you look at the blocks. I'd go with it as it is.

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  3. I prefer the second photo:)

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  4. I prefer the second layout. In the third layout, some neutral "plus signs" catch my eye. I do like the greens in it.

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  5. I like the chaos controlled like you have it. Great job!

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  6. I like it with most of the green removed and really didn't even notice the 2 blocks with green until you mentioned them. Maybe in person the green is stronger than in the photo, but I really don't mind it in there.

    I like the last layout. That is the one I used and I think it helps to have the darks together and lights together. The other layout which is what I thought I would use just leaves me feeling uneasy for some reason.

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  7. Personally I like the green. I also like pic #2 better than #3. What a great pattern!

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  8. It looks great to me? But, for me personally, I am not that fussy about layouts. I just let it happen organically. LOL

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  9. So interesting! I guess, just go with what you like! Great pattern, and they all look good to me! ... and I just spotted those neutral +signs, very clever!

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