One Thing, One Week Challenge

Amy from Amy's Creative Side hosts a great motivator every now and then to get one thing accomplished...  take one more step in a project...  finish off that one last thing that's been lingering on your creative mind.  It's not meant to pressure us, but simply provide that extra nudge to get that one thing checked off!

For last week's challenge I said I wanted to finalize the design for my X Marks the Spot quilt.  You will remember the pieces have been sitting around sometime now.

So, I started by taking the stack of squares and putting them up on the design wall to get reaquainted. 

Beautiful! 

Stunning!! 

I am still so in love with this line and the concept I started (phew!)

I opened a small sketch pad and started to doodle different ways to connect the squares.  Seeing them on the wall again, I am remembering that the patterns and colors are very strong.  I remembered that I wanted to used bigger pieces and solids to help break up the chaos a little. 

I am still playing with the concept of X's or crosses.  I started drawing them out and realized I had a lot of little holes that weren't filled... I wasn't connecting them in the right way.  hmmm...

Start over.  new graph... free hand lines...

Then it hit me. 

What if I use those tiny squares I made with all the wildness and patterns as the 'center' of the X?  And then I use a mix of solids and large pieces of fandango print to fill in the rest of the larger X?  So, it would be an X within an X. 

In my doodle, the highlighter colors are meant to be either a solid or a large piece of fandango fabric, while the pencil drawn block is meant to be the squares I made (pictured in the beginning of this post).

I started to outline the bigger X's just to get a feel for how the pattern works and I am really liking the effect. 

I also realized that I don't like how an X is cut off or incomplete here.  I am leaning toward adding a border that would allow the arm of an X to reach toward the edge of the quilt.  The border would also fill in a void if there wasn't an X filling the space.

I feel a sense of renewed direction with this quilt now.  I am ready to tackle some of the math to decide what pieces I need to cut... then I will be off to the horses to really start assembling this top. 

I hope you enjoyed a look into my design process.  It's mostly messy.  It's probably unconventional, but at the end it's very much me.  Please tell me I'm not the only one who designs in highlighter and pen (ha!) 

Also, have a look over at Amy's to see what others have completed in one week!

日本のための多くの愛
Much love for Japan