Quite a while ago I took a photo of all the blocks to date in the autumn quilt, and could see those that stood out for all the wrong reasons. This one stood out partly because of all the orange fabric round the edge, though it seemed like a good idea at the time because it made it simpler, but also because alternate the red and beige flying geese don’t work; the red stands out, the beige disappears, and it makes it all look wonky, which I didn’t realise from close-up but you see it from a distance. I really like the middle, and don’t want to lose the animals, so  decided to take it apart (gulp).

I kept the middle as is, but gave it a new outside. (Yes, that took a lot of decision-making and mental energy, not my strong point). I finished with this:

I would have used the same green that’s in the middle for the outside corners, but ran out.

Then I used the red flying geese, and came up with this:

(Both photos are a bit overexposed). I wanted to be able to keep the animals, but I hope that here the orange isn’t so overpowering. I might have preferred to have brown on the outer corners, but orange triangles where the brown is now didn’t work because it replicated the orange on the inner part too much, so I just left it like this and quit fiddling. I did have to order more fabric to get the beige triangles at the middle of each outer edge, which involved getting a pack of pre-cuts and has landed me with a lot of other pre-cut squares in shades of brown which I’ll never use, but there you go.

I spent a goodly portion of yesterday tackling moths which are eating our carpet and were partly living under the box I keep fabric in, which was a bit depressing and involved moving a lot of furniture to get underneath, not the best on a hot day.

So I will have to find a  way of using the remaining fat quarters from the original block, but I think these two are better than the original. Phew, all this colour choice is exhausting! I’ve laid out most of another block, using purple-ish / brown-ish colours to give the last mouse block some company, so will do that before deciding on a new way to use the beige / orange flying geese from the first block shown here.

I have taken a photo of blocks to date, excluding some I think I won’t use, but shall contemplate that in another post. In the meantime, the forecast is for hot in London this week (maybe not by southern US standards, but by mine!), so I shall suffer on the underground on my way to and from work. This chap’s happy, though (taken last night from our living room window):