Break It! Break It Good!

 It is said that before you can get out of a rut you have to know you're in one. When the wind blew the blocks off my design wall it was as if Fate was sending me a sign. MOVE ALONG. But where?

I sat at my sewing table, looking back at the mess on the design wall. I shifted in my seat, knocking something to the floor. I bent down and picked up this page. It's a page of triangles from the Zebra tutorial, designed to be cut out so students could design their own arrangements. I looked at it and saw six distinct vertical columns. Maybe I should arrange my big prints in half diamonds facing in one direction and the blander ones facing in the other...

I got up and took all the blocks off the wall and stared to lay out the big colored triangles. but then I remembered this, from the Parade of Zebras quilt, where, if placed correctly, a series of four big triangles could suggest a curve.

So I arranged my big prints

and used the bland blenders to fill in around them. As soon as I did I knew I had an arrangement I liked. I rearranged the blenders a bit to get the best effect.

This wasn't quite IT, but I liked it A LOT better than anything else I had tried. I stepped back and realized I had made a mistake.

The big triangles with the big prints weren't directly above and beneath each other, as they needed to be to make that S shape I wanted, so I fixed them. I really liked this, but it was late, and I was tired. Something was jiggling in my head, but I knew if I didn't get to bed I'd stay up another hour or two.

Sleep matters, so I went to bed. I knew what I would do next, and I could wait.