Those Circles!

Jeepers! I feel like the poster child for trial and error! While working on my latest quilt I had quite a difficult time deciding on what color to make one of the design elements.

The issue was the white circles, as seen below. I loved their shape and placement, but I could see that they attracted too much attention. I needed to tone down the contrast.

So, I started auditioning a variety of other colors. Yellow?

No. I figured it should be a lighter or darker version of one of the colors already in the quilt. Pink?

Nope. Pale aqua?

Uh-uh. Enough of  these pastels. What about something bright?

Hmm. Not too bad. (Actually, I tried brighter orange fabrics and they seemed a little too much to me.) How about dark red?

I like this well enough to cut out the shapes.

Well, they were no longer attracting attention, but now I wondered if they showed up enough!

I FINALLY went back to orange, now in more subdued versions.

Would you believe it? I now thought the orange didn’t show up enough. Maybe I should add some darker hand stitching around each one.

Maybe. Or would lighter thread provide more contrast?

Never one to make life easy for myself, I ripped out the dark stitching and redid it with yellow. I was FINALLY happy with it.

Whew! I’m giving myself a gold star!

What do you deserve a gold star for? Let me know and I’ll email you one.

Ellen Lindner