July Vacation Time Block

This month's Vacation Time block - Hotdog Stand by Pat Sloan - reads like a churn dash block. This is the last one with a frog in the middle. I really like how the green brings out the frog, but I didn't like how the corners of the churn - the yellow triangles - get lost beside that funky red/purple fiesta.

Version 2. Well, moving the green to the outside edge does nothing for the churn dash. The block seems confused, although it does look bigger than the first version.  Now I was really not happy because since this is a stash quilt, this is pretty much all of the green I have left. I don't have the luxury of picking different places to put the green in the block. Time to step back and look at the fabrics and what they are telling me about value and position in this block. Maybe the churn has to go.

I'm much happier with this version! The frog actually looks like the focus now with the lighter colour triangles on the inside of the block. I have used the yellow as background in other blocks so it's not a big deal here to flip the corners (one of the reasons I hadn't flipped them was trying to keep the toile a background fabric not a block feature print. Oh well!)

The layout for this quilt is not traditional rows and columns of blocks. I'm looking forward to being creative when it comes to all the 'fill in' blocks to come.

You can see a whole bunch of different versions of this block in different colours on Pat's blog here - Vacation Time Block 7. Notice how value placement effects the way you see the block - especially the size of it.



Thanks for sharing in my quilting JOY today,

Sarah V.

p.s. I still have my selvage kits if you are interested - check them out here!