100 Blocks Inspiration & Competition

Well I have been very fortunate to have another of my blocks chosen for the latest Quiltmaker 100 blocks and through Quiltmaker's generosity you have the chance to win your own copy of the magazine. Details at the end of this post.

Lately many of my ideas have been a follow on from the Raconteur quilt and this block is no exception. Although all of the Raconteur blocks are hexagonal it doesn't take too many errors to change it to a square block and Patrise's gift is no different.

As for the name... well I had pulled out fabric from my stash and took it with me on a weekend's retreat. I thought I had more than enough fabric but found that I didn't have enough of the red to do the last triangle. No matter that it was a small triangle I didn't have it. I put a call out to one of my online quilting groups and Patrise sent it to me.

	Initially I planned for the block to simply stretch out from the centre in four directions but wasn't too excited by the block that resulted. Next I tried simply spinning the triangles around and still thought it could be improved.
	I had been looking at some perspective drawing and then tried to encompass that idea into my design... Patrise's Gift was the result. As you may guess red was not my first plan for the colour.
Once I worked out my block design the next bit was to find a design that would work with it it. The central medallion was easy as I thought it was perfect way to showcase the blocks and they were active enough to carry the middle		That left two considerations -  the corners and the area surrounding the medallion. The first two pictures showed the two possible ways to slope the blocks and although I initially thought all going the same way was boring, the alternative was too disjointed.
	I still however thought that the corners were too heavy and so to lighten it I took the outer strips from the block and simply made the centre block and framed it in plain fabric. This was definitely the best choice.
Initially I had placed four of the triangle centres around the medallion to fill in the space as I am a piecer and not an appliquer. However when I added borders etc there was too much action and no where for the eyes to relax or focus so I removed them.		The plain areas would be perfect for detailed quilting - I'm only just beginning on my machine quilting experience:)
	So why have I cut off the corners? So that the quilt can be turned around in all directions on the bed and so equalise or minimise fading due to the sun. Also it means that the corners don't hang lower that the rest of the quilt when on the bed.

Each month another free BOM is uploaded and also a new collection is on sale from the Raconteur Collection here.
For a chance to win your own copy of volume 8 of Quiltmaker's 100 Blocks simply leave your name and the colour of the block you like best from this collection which will be January's featured collection.
A name will be drawn next Saturday. Make sure that there is some way that I can contact you. I'm sorry but anonymous comments are just that anonymous and there is no way of tracking you down.
Good luck.