Studio Snapshots | Purple, Grey and Gold Baby Quilt Step 4

Once I had started cutting into the pile of fabric I’d dyed to piece the first quilt, I cut up a bunch of strips so I could get to work on the “improv, loosey-goosey-sorta-log-cabiny” quilt:

Improv piecing in process! #fbp

I started piecing blocks and placing them up on my design wall. After I had a few up, I let what I’d already made guide me in my next choice. The first 6 were pretty basic, where each one combined one purple and one yellow tint, and using more than one of the greys for the background. They were starting to look a little predictable so I changed it up with an all yellow square with just a teeny strip of purple and really liked that one:

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So I made a few more that had a bit more surprise going on:

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I decided that I wanted to do a loosely checkerboard design, where the outside color of the square alternates between purple and yellow.

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Once I got the final square made, I started moving things around. Because I used several different tones of grey for the background, I had to pay attention to that as well. This arrangement grouped a few of the darkest grey backgrounds in the lower right:

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This arrangement breaks that up, but I don’t like the square that’s formed by the 4 dark purple squares here:

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This arrangement fixes that, but because the grey at the top of the bottom right square is so skinny, if it doesn’t match the grey above it I’m worried it looks odd, so….I re-made that block with more grey at the top! (Sorry the colors are off from picture to picture, these were quick iphone snaps at different times of the day and night over a couple of days).

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Then I turned the “reject” block, which was my favorite one, into a pillow top!

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I love where this is going!