penny patch sudoku

my favorite penny patch block so far

 friday afternoon,  my baby seester, katee, texted us other 4 and asked if anyone wanted a last-minute girls night out since her husband was insisting she get herself out of the house for the evening. i told her i was sewing and she was welcome to bring over any craft projects she had going, knowing full well she always has something up her sleeve. she was happy to come join me, but she didn't have anything going for once. my offer was for her to help me quilt. i thought it was a perfect opportunity to get some artistic input with the layout on my penny patch and also to maybe pique her interest in quilting. she accepted my offer. when she arrived, i showed her the penny patch layout and explained how it was to go together, then stepped back and let her work.

 i was going to complete the quilting on "twirly", but ran out of thread! so i worked on penny patch squares instead. despite the fact that katee got to witness several of my home ec moments of sewing blocks backwards or cutting too short, it was a peaceful, relaxing evening of sewing and chatting with my seester in a way we don't get to do often.

katee, like most of my siblings, is an artist with many interests, and did a beautiful job on the layout. unfortunately, there was something off with it that was niggling away at my aesthetic sensibilities. it wasn't her, it was me, for sure. so on saturday, i tried moving a few blocks around - something she fully expected me to do and completely endorsed. that didn't work. i felt like i was playing fabric sudoku all weekend.

in the end, i printed off a few photos of rachel's original "vintage tangerine" quilt and studied it, actually broke it down into charts and lists. i am completely entranced by the original and wanted to know what the difference between the quilt along recipe and "vintage tangerine" was. how i wish i could see inside her head as she made all these choices the first time around. that would be a real lesson in quilting!

rachel, quite understandably, simplified the original pattern a bit since the quilt along is designed for beginners. ever one to change a pattern even slightly, i did just that, even with her excellent recipe. i noticed that in the original, there are actually 3 kinds of blocks, not just 2: 6.5" simple square, 4 patch of 3.5" squares, and the penny patch square. also, the placement of the blocks alters by row: simple blocks and 4 squares alternating, then simple blocks and penny patches alternating.

i quickly realized i needed more fabrics. i pulled over a dozen auditions and even cut a few. in the end, i only added 3. i also culled at least 2 from the original pile. i added two more modern meadow fabrics that incorporated both the orange and blue in the pattern. i also added an orange floral katie jump rope print that was hiding away in my stash.

the cutting recipe was a bit different, too. i broke that down and assigned some of my fabrics for hers, then laid out blocks using her exact pattern (almost). maybe it was a bit much for me to invest so heavily in understanding the original design, but it taught me a whole lot along the way. it was quite a fascinating exercise, actually. i learned a lot about design, color, and placement, that changed some ideas i have held for a while now. i originally chose this pull because it reminded me of the "vintage tangerine" colors (and the pull had been waiting on a shelf for over two years), but now i see how very different they are despite having similar colors.

after studying her quilt, i realize that working with fabrics from the same line, which i enjoy doing, doesn't allow for a certain quality of contrast or "pop" that mixing does. i don't know how to describe this exactly other than when the values of the colors are all the same, that contrast is missing. this is neither a good or bad design choice, but one i am aware of now. i would not have chosen the fabrics i did for this quilt after studying "vintage tangerine". i'm not saying they are wrong or i don't like them, but they don't produce the effect i was going for. that's okay. i'm moving ahead with what i have and look forward to trying this again with my second pull (that joel dewberry floral and those blues).

 so here are rows 1 - 7, out of 10, for penny patch as it stands. (sorry for the chairs in the phtoto, but someone was sleeping and i couldn't move them because of the noise factor!) for now, i'm following that first quilt's layout exactly, as stated. once i have it all in place, i'll decide if i want changes. i still have lots of penny patches to sew, but not quite so many now that i'm doing half penny patches and half 4 sq blocks. i'm really looking forward to finishing this quilt.

d4 has shown interest in it and i just might give this to her instead of a pillow sham for Christmas. that's not a final decision, but i'm considering it. that would kill two birds with one stone.

linking in to Rachel's penny patch quilt along link up at stitched in color and wip Wednesday at freshly pieced.