What's the Center of Attention?

The next packet in the shoebox contained 25 khaki-and-white nine patches. At one time our bee exchanged blocks and I suggested these. Trading innocuous blocks (you know, the ones that don't look like much) might let everyone branch further in their individual styles. What could be more low-key than khaki? No one else liked the idea and the blocks went in the shoebox.

Nine-Patch Hourglass Lap Quilt

There was just enough dark red to make this lap quilt. I enlarged the 4.5" nine-patches with four red triangles and added alternate hourglass blocks. Chartreuse is the complement of the dark red. A couple of the nine patches have the greatest value contrast, but the eye focuses on the second most value contrast - the red/chartreuse areas - because it's larger. Sometimes the original block doesn't need to be the center of attention. I like the red lozenge shape and the chartreuse stretched stars.

Detail of machine quilting

The border is flying geese but my first version looked a bit different. When I sketched this design on graph paper (yes, I still use the stuff) it looked great. It looked okay when pieced. But when I snapped a photo before quilting, it looked horrible. The longer I looked at the corners the worse they appeared. It had to be ripped out and replaced. Small change; big difference; worth the trouble.

Sketches I made for the quilting designs in the chartreuse hourglass and flying geese. Given the contrasting colors and values in this traditional styled quilt, I chose to change thread color too. I quilted a black feather in the outer border. It's not visible at all and was so hard to see while quilting that I turned the quilt over and quilted from the back.

The quilting thread is Metler Fine Embroidery and the batt is Mountain Mist Cream Rose, a lightweight batt very suitable for warm climates.

Fret not; enjoy the day.

Ann

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