Sunday, March 8, 2009

Bear Tracks in the Mud

It seems as if spring has arrived here in Toronto. We have melting temperatures and heavy rains. If any bears have woken up by now, they will be making tracks in the mud! That is sort of how I feel about my block this week. I used fabrics from my stash. This is great and exactly what I wanted to do with these weekly blocks - to use up my scraps and practice my piecing skills. I just am not loving the colour combination that I used. Too many colours to make the block seem muddy in my opinion. I don't have many scraps that measure 4 1/2 inches in my scrap bin. Most of my scraps are around 2 1/2 inches wide, therefore I was forced to use four colours. But I don't feel as if these colours (and fabrics) go together very well in one block.
I have not sewn the four sections together yet. I can't decide what to do. I could do them the way the pattern suggested as in the above layout. Or I could put it together like this.....
I just can't decide. But I am leaning towards the bottom layout. I think I like it best for the types of fabrics and colours that I used. In addition to this, I am only going to have one block to put into a sampler quilt, so the secondary pattern, that would result from the original layout of a complete quilt, will be lost. Oh, well. I still have lots of other things to keep me occupied while I figure it out. What do you think?

5 comments:

Donna said...

I like the scrappy feel of the block -- the mixture of such different fabrics/colours in one block doesn't bother me in the least, in fact I feel myself smiling and feeling comforted when I see them.

I like the layout with all the HST pointing out for an orphan block -- feels like more of a single block to me, rather than four blocks :-)

Unknown said...

Yes, a real scrappy quilt in the works and I agree with QP...the bottom layout is striking.

Librarynan said...

Since we don't have the luxury of making the quilt top that would showcase the primary and secondary patterns, I think most of us like the "traditional Bear Paw" setting... Except Donna's because the fish pattern was/is echoed in the HSTs looking like little fins - Ya think?

Vicki said...

I also don't mind the 4 differnet fabrics giving the scrappy look. I think they work better in the bottom layout because in this one they come together instead of the top one where as Donna says it looks like 4 separate blocks.

Anonymous said...

I'm with the rest. The bottom layout for sure!