McCall's Challenge #2 - Pulsed Illumination

Round 2 of the McCall's Quilt Design Star 2011 Competition had the following requirements:

Use 8 of these 10 MODA fabrics:

 

Hard to see, but it is white with
a tinge of green occassionally.

Whatever you use, must be at least 50% of the quilt. You can add as many other fabrics as you like, as long as it is less than 50% of the quilt. The quilt must be at least 24" x 24" or equivalent (does not have to be square). 

Coming up with an aesthetically pleasing set of colors out of this group was my biggest challenge. I ended up NOT using the green and yellow.

Initially I decided a 20" block would allow me to still add the border and stay within my 50% requirement. 20x20 = 400... x 2 = 800...square root of ....is ~28", so that would mean a 4" border on a 20" block if the border was from different fabric). Depending upon how much more fabric I can use outside of that blocksize, I can then increase the quilt's total size.

I went looking through my EQ7 block library and came across a couple of different ones that seemed to be interesting and might lend themselves to multiple colors.

Here is the evolution of my designing in EQ7...the first block I worked on was the 'faceted star'. I partitioned two key elements of the block and put fabrics in an order that would create dimension behind the blades and dimension at the center.

 Some of the fabrics are 'grunge' by basic grey and so I went to one of their old lines that I thought might coordinate nicely --'blush'. I went to my LQS - Stash - and looked at some of the blush fabrics and discovered that the blue is really more aqua, so this idea was NOT going to work even though in EQ it seemed like it would work.

 Oh...let's try to re-orient this block and make it 3d!  Nooooooooooooooooo.

 What about some strip piecing to try to use more of the fabric at similar levels of usage.

 Not liking it.

How about some art deco?

too busy (above) ....next series figuring out the order of color for the center...

 

Try some border treatments that might utilize the green and yellow...?

The 'faceted star' block is what I ultimately decided to use. I printed templates for all pieces (one of the 8 sections was sufficient), pieced the 8 sections together minding the intersection points carefully by marking dots (learned from Jinny Beyer!). This was a huge clue to keeping the pieces coming together correctly. Once I got the top put together, I needed to add the applique dots. I used the 'Rose of Sharon' Accuquilt Go! Cutter die. This really didn't give me the size of dots that I needed. Just using the brown dot (I had to use the brown ones for sure as I needed the 8th fabric!) didn't seem right.The aperture blades used in the setting triangles to make the block 'off-point' were the last elements that I incorporated.

  I ended up hand cutting 4 of the 5 sizes based on using my old stencils from drafting class to draw the appropriate sizes!

The final version (below).. "Pulsed Illumination" --think like you're taking a strobascopic (with a strobe light) photo of a fan or motor that is turning and the pulses of the strobe light illuminate the blades as it goes around. The block looks like it is tumbling based on the 'off-point' setting and the aperture blades just add a bit more interest, allows the center block to be bigger and still stays within the ~20" of a fat quarter's outside dimensions.  I had the Jinny Beyer border print, 'Millenium', in my stash and it had so many different colors it seemed to go well with what I was going to use.

Pulsed Illumination, 37"x37"

 Thanks for your support through round 1 and now in round 2, I'll continue to appreciate your daily vote through September 8, 2011. Vote now!