sweet and sour

A few weeks ago while scrolling through my blog feed I was stopped in my tracks by this Pickle Dish Variation quilt from Red Pepper Quilts.  Two days later Rita followed up with a tutorial for the two blocks that make up the pattern and I immediately pulled out my “triangle in a square” ruler and some paperboard to make a drunkard’s path template.

I’ve played around with curves before but never with enough success to make an entire quilt.  Rita’s instructions were to make an oversized block then trim it down.  Voilà!  A successful practice block!

Earlier this year I pre-ordered a complete bundle of Denyse Schmidt’s new Franklin collection.  With 24 different prints in 2 color ways I figured I would have enough variation to use this line for a Pickle Dish Variation quilt of my own.  My highly coveted Denyse Schmidt stash is growing and since my practice block turned out well I decided this quilt would be worthy of cutting into the bundle.

My bundle was fat quarters and I had plenty to make all the curved blocks from the warm colors and the spiked blocks with the cool colors.  I divided each set of 12 into 4 lights, 4 mediums, and 4 darks.  Some were borderline but I thought I had enough contrast to create the light/dark variance that Rita described.  I was wrong.

Here is my finished top.  What do you think?  Sweet or sour?

Unfortunately, there was not enough contrast for the pattern to emerge.  Also, I didn’t pay enough (or any) attention to the scale of the different prints. 

On one hand I’m disappointed.  This was a lot of cutting, piecing and trimming and I lost the pattern in the fabric - sour.  On the other hand, this fabric is beautiful and even more so all cut and pieced together - sweet.

This was an excellent lesson for me in color, pattern and scale.  Learning from our mistakes is always a good thing.

Special thanks to Rita Hodge for inspiration and instruction.

Linking this Friday finish up with Crazy Mom Quilts.