A challenge in black prints

 Hi everyone! I hope you have been having a good week, though I acknowledge it's been a difficult one here in the US, again. (See the bottom of this post for some somber thoughts.) Once again today, we are in the rain. This week the grass was so long that there are clumps all over the lawn from cutting it. Seriously, it looked like a pasture or something out there. All the better for the flowers, though, right?

Did you ever have a project where you made a few blocks and thought you would really like the finished quilt, but you just didn't have the motivation to make the rest of the blocks? That's pretty much how I felt about the black blocks that I had been working on off and on for a couple of years. I loved them but didn't want to make any more of them. Before we go any further with this story, let me show you what they turned into:

 

Not what I had in mind at the beginning! I was looking through the project boxes to put away the pink and green star blocks, and I pulled the black blocks box (say that three times fast!) out of the stack. "I have to make some more of those blocks," I said to myself (with a dramatic sigh.) Then I thought, "but what if I didn't?"

What if I didn't make more blocks? What could I do with just the ten blocks that I had? The more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea. I could have a personal challenge to use those ten blocks and make them into a quilt. I told myself I could make some easy alternate blocks and any kind of borders that I wanted, but no more black blocks.

Pull out the paper and start planning! Once I decided on the alternate blocks, it all came together pretty easily. The really fun part was choosing colors to go with the black blocks. I chose the light grayish blue and the very pale yellow, and I think they both worked. They're hard to see in the pictures but are charming in person. I almost went with a red, but I'm so glad that I didn't. 

 

 

I made the blocks for this quilt a couple of years ago from various black prints, and used a random half yard for the alternate blocks. The border is a very old print from Marti Michell and Maywood Studio. It's super pretty, but I am glad to use it up after all this time. There's about an 8-inch square left, which makes me seriously happy.

I think my experiment worked, though it's a bit bigger than intended. It's about 60 by 75, which would be great for a dorm, wouldn't it? Not bad for starting with ten blocks. Plus, I was left with an empty project box, which I quickly filled with some scraps so that another project doesn't jump in there when I'm not looking.

 

Hope you all have a great weekend. This weekend I'm planning to plant flowers while I pray for the children murdered in Uvalde, Texas. There's a lot that I could say, but nothing that really adds to any solutions. I find myself thinking a lot about my students who just graduated-- strong, brave, smart young people, many of whom are headed for their first teaching positions. Will they someday be forced to step over the bodies of their students and walk past the bodies of their peers? Or will they sacrifice themselves to save the children in their classes? How many of them will continue teaching in the face of preparing for violence every day? Every one of them would stand in front of a gunman without question, though they should never have to. But this is the country we live in right now. That's really all the words I have, because it's all been said before.

I could go on, but instead I'll just wish you peace and a restful weekend.

Sharing at Finished or not Friday, Brag About Your Beauties, and the Patchwork and Quilts linkup at Quilting Patchwork Applique.