A Quilt That Needs to Simmer

One of the blogs I read regularly is Exuberant Color. She is an awesome quilt maker with a great eye for color and design. By way of Pinterest, I happened to run across this post of hers from 2011 with a tutorial for making a quick quilt top. I pinned it and moved on. A week or two later, as part of my sewing room clean out effort, I came upon this lovely set of fabric.

I immediately remembered that tutorial and decided to try it with these. What I didn't realize is that most of them were too small to get all the pieces I needed for the blocks. That sent me back to the stash to find a few more friends to join these.

This is the final stack. Enough for sixteen blocks.

These blocks. 

Kind of boring if you just stop here. The next step is to cut up the blocks.

And then shuffle them and sew them back together.

I love the block. And then I put them all together.

I didn't like them so much anymore. I arranged and rearranged, but no matter what I did, they just look like a jumbled mess.

I put them away for a day, then tried again. It was no better. One thing I really don't like is the random blobs of light fabric. I think I should have been a little less random in my shuffling and sewing. For now, I've made a pile of blocks I really like and a pile of blocks that I'm not super fond of. I think there will be some unsewing going on soon. Once I get happy with the blocks, then I think I'm going to try a layout with some sashing between each block. There is really no place for the eye to rest and it just makes me tired to look at it as it is.

I'm sure there is something wonderful lurking in there, but for now, this one is going away for a few days. I need to give my eyes a rest before taking the next step. Sometimes a quilt comes easy, and sometimes it has to simmer for a while.