Try Something New

I spend a lot of time in this blog trying to convince you to try designing a quilt or two. I guess if I want you to try something new, it behooves me to try something new once in a while too.

I bought this African batik from Pippa Moore.


It is about 7" x 8" and I want to use it as the center of a small wall hanging. I've never designed around a picture before.

What if I do the first thing that comes into my head and add a black border, making a 10"x10" block?

This would make an excellent frame if all I wanted was a 10"x10" wall hanging. But I want to make something larger; so I need to try something else.

What if I use a dark green to make a 10"x10" block?

I like this better.

How should I quilt it?

What if I try echo quilting around the image?

I'm not keen on this. Especially since my free motion machine quilting skills are no better than my free-hand computer drawing skills.

What if I try light green quilting radiating out from the image?

I like this better; I think I might be able to do it.

I now need to design simple blocks to go around this.

What if I try these 10" block?

They are too big; they dwarf the central image.

What if I try simple 5" blocks?

This is better. It's more in scale.

I like the way this looks. I'm close to wanting to make this.

But I'm not sure if the new blocks may not be too simple and I'm not sure how I want to quilt them. So I'm going to leave this design for now and come back to it later.