Playing Around

I think one of the reasons why my quilts turn out so great is that I never stop pushing ideas around. I never settle. It took me a few tries to figure out how to make a dark diamonds quilt and the result was Dark Majesty. It took me months to figure out how to make a black and white divided-in-half Crayons quilt, but the Black & White Crayons is the quilt my pal Julie thinks defines my work.

I know there's a quilt in that oh-so-modern variation, (the first one in yesterday's post.) I just haven't found it yet. I'll figure it out. It may take months, but I'll crack that nut eventually.

In the meantime, I wanted to play around, so last night I went into the studio and came up with this.
To fill in the empty space, I'd need to make more blocks.

And the more I look at this design, I think shifting it over a bit would be better.

Oh yeah, this is better.

I like this. And yes, these are the same blocks I've been playing with the last couple of days.

NOW, here is something I have observed. These zebras can be really bright, and hard to look at, like in the examples above that have a strong light/dark contrast in the pairs. But these designs can be really successful when the pairs do NOT have a strong contrast, like...

the Golden Zebras,

the Jealousy quilt,

or the Firebird quilt.

 So even though the really zingy examples might not float your particular boat, the variations shown here can be adapted to much more subtle, but equally successful designs.

I would have discovered NONE OF THEM had I not pushed the ideas around.