Twirling

I know I've mentioned before that I tend to have several projects on the go at any given time, so this post will come as no real surprise.  While work on the project yesterday reached a sticking point (meaning I had come to a stop because I was deliberating on how to get the look I want), inspiration struck.  No, not in how I would finish that project, but for a new project.  A project that would use the orange fabrics left from the crazy 9 patch blocks for my husbands quilt. Oh, yeah!  Check out my first block...

I think I've seen this design called a snail's trail?  I'm not sure.  It looks like the blocks are spinning or twirling to me, so for now I'm referring to it as the Orange Twirl Quilt.  The cutting is really straight forward as it's all squares, but it did take me last evening and part of this morning to complete because I was working with leftover fabrics and not yardage.    Then the playing began.  I arranged the fabrics like this...

and then like this....  This design really relies on contrast, so before I started, I tried to place all the fabrics in stacks of light or dark.  That helped, but it often takes standing back from the layout and viewing the arrangement from a distance or taking a photo of the placement to really see how the colours are interacting with one another.

 You can just see some of my crazy 9 patch blocks on the left of my design board.  All necessary blocks are made... but I'm still waiting for my hubby to contribute some of his artwork to be included in the quilt top before I can go further on this quilt.

I managed to  get four rows of four blocks each out of all the orange fabrics I had on hand (even though it looks incomplete in the picture above, I have the pieces to finish those lower blocks - I just ran out of space on my design board).    I'm looking forward to spending an evening piecing while enjoying an audio book and with any luck, a finishing idea will come to me so I complete the project I showed you a peek of earlier this week. ;o)

Happy sewing!