Making it work

Back in February, I was the quilter for that month's do.Good Stitches block for the Emerge circle, and I asked my beemates for an original and a reversed version of the Scrap Plus block in blues and yellows (you can read about all the details and a tutorial for the reversed version in this post). My beemates responded enthusiastically and sent some lovely blocks, but when I went to put them all together, I just couldn't make it work. I tried a million layouts, but the colors weren't gelling, and the crosses/pluses were getting lost in the mix. (I wish I'd taken some pics of the failures so you could see just how bad they were. Bleh.) Finally, I decided the only option was to just split the quilt into two and make one quilt using the original block design and one quilt using the reversed block design.

I was okay with the looks of the separate quilts, though I wasn't terribly keen on having to make two quilts instead of one (my to do list is already out of control), but when I posted my idea on Instagram, I got one more suggestion I hadn't yet tried: a checkerboard. I had tried a checkerboard-like pattern (alternating the reverse blocks with the original blocks), but I'd been mixing the colors, which didn't work. But this suggestion made it click: I should try separating the colors and laying them out opposite one another.

Due to the number of blocks I had, a horizontal layout didn't work (without making more blocks, and I'd already made two extra at this point), so I switched it to vertical and reserved four blocks for use in the backing. I'm pretty happy with the result.

This weekend, I managed to piece the top and backing and baste it, and I plan to get started on the quilting tonight. It's great when someone else sees something you don't and opens your eyes to a new possibility, and the IG quilty community is so wonderful for that. Time to finish up!