Monday, April 26, 2010

Pinwheel Sampler Quilt Along: block four, redux


I enjoy a challenge. Or, maybe I just like making things hard for myself. In any case, block four of the pinwheel sampler quilt-along presented a challenge for me. While I liked the large windmill, this is another block that just didn't quite fit in with the movement of the rest of the blocks. After block eight was revealed, and having already fiddled with block two a bit with plans to tinker further, I decided that it would be OK to really make this quilt mine. And so after considerable frog stitching, I changed block four from this:

to this:

And this:

to this:

This is my only set of blocks where the pinwheel centers aren't the same color. All the others are copies of each other in different fabrics. This was an accident. I meant to do them in opposites, but somehow switched my fabrics in block one so that they both ended up with brown pinwheel centers. The rest of the blocks had to follow suit (that's me, coloring inside the lines again). Except when I came to block four, there was only one color in each block and so I compromised and made one of each color. In the re-making of the blocks, my desire not to waste fabric or effort overruled my desire to have everything be the same. So, here we have fraternal twin blocks instead of identical twins. I think it will be OK.

I think that if I had seen the quilt from beginning to end, I would have made only one of each of the block designs Rachel gave and then supplemented with eight other pinwheel designs so that no two blocks had exactly the same design. I was a bit hesitant to do that, in case one of my supplemental blocks was accidentally a duplicate of a block I hadn't seen yet. So, I chose to go with duplicates and I think my quilt will be fantastic.

When I started putting blocks together, LadyBug asked what the quilt was for. I told her that I was making it for our family and that we could snuggle up under it while we watched TV or read and she was pretty excited about that. Then I reminded her that it was pink and she made a face and said, 'ew.' She's such a tomboy. But I love pink, so maybe she'll love it someday too.