Vacation Time Block for May

This was my first layout for the May Vacation Time block by Pat Sloan.
It's a free block of the month through Free Quilt Patterns.

Link to 2015 Vacation Time Mystery

I ended up changing it though!

Here's my finished block

Besides the better lighting, this block looks a lot more cheerful. Even though I really liked the blue beside the bird to highlight it's blue feathers, I think the neat blues in the colliding circles fabric does the same thing. In both layouts I made sure to separate the busy patterns with a more solid looking print - partly to highlight them but also to contain them.
The main reason I switched to this layout is because the yellow print in other blocks is part of the design and not the background. I thought the overall quilt would start to get really confusing if I used the same fabric for different design purposes in the blocks.

Now that there's five blocks I'm starting to see the possibility of using red, green and blue as accent colours. I really thought that the wild yellow and pink prints would steal the show but apparently I've found a few ways to tone them down:)


Looking forward to next month's block,

Sarah V