Blue, Re-blue'd

(You can click, then double click on the photos and they will enlarge, showing you a lot more than if you just look at them normally. You will probably see the changes I have made in greater detail.)

It's a funny way to design a quilt, but once I am happy with the placement of the giant diamonds, I remove the four patch diamonds and rearrange the medium diamonds. I like to place the medium diamonds so the colors relate to the larger diamonds, and I try to distribute darker prints so they aren't bunched together. 

The changes may look minor, but (for example) all the cream and light green prints (like these, above) are gone. From a distance they read as "green" and not "blue" and didn't fit.

(By the way, I had decided that I was NOT going to go out and buy one more damn piece of fabric for this quilt. I was going to solve the problem with what I had on hand.)

 After I've got the medium diamonds placed, I place four patch diamonds next to the giant diamonds so their colors connect to each other. See the yellow-orange and orange four patch diamonds next to the yellow-orange tail of the bird in the lower-right of this photo? And then on the other side, see how the lime green four-patch connects to the limey-green leaves in the same diamond? And above that, the yellow orange again, and then higher up, the red connects to the red of the fish on the right and the red flowers in the big blue floral diamond?  That's how I start. I place one at a time, and then work out where everything else goes.

By the time I do that, though, I've got a big stack of the four-patch diamonds. There are 16 different colors here. (Yellow, yellow-orange, red orange, red, lime green, olive green, grass green, red violet, violet, a dusky pink, and six shades of blue.) I didn't use all of them. The yellow and olive green didn't work at all, but I didn't know that FOR SURE until I tried them.

(Remember my favorite quote: "In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are different." Translation: You have to try it out in real life. It doesn't always work the way you think.)

I didn't arrange the four patch diamonds like a rainbow, either. Blue is next to red, orange is next to blue, green is next to purple... and so on.

I'm almost 99% sure this is IT. Of course that means it will stay on the design wall just like this for a day or so while I study it and make minor changes.  Of course, when you get the big things right, and then you pay attention to all the tiny little things that don't appear to be important, well, then you end up with a good design.

I already see something I don't like. That dark medium diamond in the bottom row. Too dark. Gotta go...