Mini Round Robin - Round 2

I think all four of us would agree that this month was the hardest round to do.  I know mine was on my design wall the entire time, puzzling me.  Cindy had put a wonderful spin on Julie's centre block, literally, and I wanted to keep that feeling.  I knew I wanted to tilt it somehow. Putting it on point didn't look right, most likely because those angles conflicted with the HRTs.  So I knew I wanted to incorporate half-rectangle triangles, aka HRTs. 

FaceTiming with Tish tonight made me realize that I should've put a before photo in, so you see what I started with.  Here is the block I received from Cindy.

I used strips of white Moda Grunge left over from Aidan's quilt, Radiance, to put a box frame around it, and then used random strips laying around to mark off the possible angles I had in mind.  I could see a white square floating behind the coloured fabrics in Cindy's round; was there a way I could play off that?

Enter math.  And Mini Round Robin rules that we'd set out at the beginning, one of which was only being allowed to add a maxium of 6" finished to a round.  So these HRTs had to be mighty skinny.

I pulled various fabrics in keeping with Julie's oranges, purples, one pink, and yellow-greens, although there are some almost-mint greens in as well, and that rich brownish-berry checkered start to her offset improv log cabin.  Improv!  That was when I knew I needed to add improv to this round and stripes.  Yikes.  That worried me a bit.  Improv I've done, but not a lot.

The rick rack fabric was just to mimic a stripe; at this point I hadn't made all four of the improv striped rectangles.

I still really like the above idea I had going, to have the HRTs made out of striped rectangles.  So I sewed my four strips, and figured I could have a skinny white frame before adding the stripes...but that would leave bias edges on all four sides...Tish would probably not be too appreciative of that!  Or ...I could add a second outside frame after I angled off the stripes...

Hmmm... I was losing a fair bit of the fabrics doing the HRTs this way too and creating a fair bit of bulk at the corners....

Back to thinking.  Drawing.

Yep, using that Quilter's Planner Tish sent me to the max:-)

The idea of angling of the Grunge as the HRT and then adding the stripes was the one that really did appeal to me in the end.  (drawn in pink) Which was this morning, btw...a busy weekend with time out of the house meant I didn't have the sewing time I needed when it came down to the wire.

I put cornerstones in the four corners instead of carrying the stripe to the edges.  I originally had thought to do all four a green to echo Cindy's squares that tumble, but couldn't find a good one, or not enough OF a good one.  So I did four different ones, and matched them to the colours in Cindy's HRTs!

Each one has meaning:

A long-hoarded Nancy Halvorsen print, only about a fat eighth left

This one, left over from a good friend's baby quilt I made, says swans on the selvage, but I always think geese.  As in Canada.

The other purple corner is a chunk of Moda Marble Ombre Dots from Dayna's grad quilt.  I was with Julie last summer when I found the perfect purple to use in the final border of Dayna's quilt; I chose not to use a piece of it here because I wanted a richer purple to pull in the Grunge purple from her centre.

The fourth corner, the brilliant orange, is another chunk left over from Aidan's quilt, fittingly called Concrete...Rock Solid.  Let's just say Julie's family knows their concrete!

I'm sending it off to Tish tomorrow for her to do her magic on the final round.  This has been SO MUCH fun and even though it was such hard work and lots of agonizing this month, it is good to push oneself and to build on others' work; thus we grow.  Of course doing this with such good friends makes it that much better.

Here are the links to the others' posts for Round 3:
Cindy
Tish
Julie

Linking up with
Cooking Up Quilts
Blossom Heart Quilts 
Freemotion by the River 
Sew Fresh Quilts