Red Grows

I've trimmed all my blocks, and am now arranging them on the design wall. There are a couple of "rules" in my head for this, so it is taking a bit of time.

First rule, the BLOB rule. Avoid putting too many dark fabrics together. They will blend together and look like a hole in the quilt. It will draw the viewer's eye like a bull's eye, and the eye will get stuck. That's not good. This is the most important thing about arranging fabrics in any quilt.

 Second rule is that I don't like it when the same fabric touches itself in another block. Why? It can create a smaller blob, and that isn't good either, plus it can disrupt the pattern of the overall design.

These two rules are paramount in my quilting. They are the ones I follow for every single quilt I make. These two almost take care of themselves if you use a lot of fabrics, and if they have a good variety of pattern and scale.

Next are the rules I have for this quilt. See those red squares where four triangles meet? Notice how I have tried to vary the light/dark and pattern in each one.  That's no accident. If I am going to have big solid shapes made from several blocks, I want to break them up a bit. Yes, I want to make them more interesting, but also to follow rule #1.

Another rule for this quilt is to have one of the multicolor fabrics in each of the big light pinwheels. I'm not quite sure I have enough blocks to do this, but I have extra fabric and I'll make more blocks if I need to.

The quilt will be six big blocks across by eight down, and once it's on the wall, I'll fine tune it.