Something Pink...

I've been complaining for a while that a great deal of my stash of fabric is in the pink spectrum. I'm not against pink - in fact, it was one of my favorite colors when I was a younger child - but it's not a color I find inspiring or easy to fit into the things I make. But I was getting a little tired of being mocked by the giant pile of pinks - so when I came across a charm pack of Cherry on Top, I knew it was pink enough to work with some of my stash - without being too incredibly pink.

Slightly inspired by some directions I found for a disappearing 16 patch, I set out to make something similar with what I had on hand.

In addition to the charm pack pieces, I added some textured pieces from my stash (in pink, brown, and cream), as well as a couple pink prints from the stash. When assembling my nine patches, I made sure the textured pieces fell in the center of one of the edges so I wouldn't have to cut them in the next step.

All three prints in the center column are added from stash

Instead of cutting parallel to the stitching as I have in my previous disappearing nine patches, following the inspiration of the disappearing 16 patch, I went along the diagonal, cutting each block into four triangles.

Which got stitched back together into square blocks.

After completing the next couple steps, I have a couple ideas about how to make it easier in the future, but at the time I just took things one at a time working center out. 

Next, I cut some solid fabrics, pink and red, to make a border around the blocks:

I really wanted to keep the border on point, but I wasn't particularly successful with my early attempts at Y seams, so I stuck with something I knew how to do. That did meant more trimming before I was ready for the next step (which is another one I now think I could have done more cleverly).

After trimming the blocks, I added some triangles (some solid, some print) to the corners to put the original squares back on point. I was really liking it - until I started squaring these blocks. You might be able to see just how near the diamond's points are to the edges of the squared block? Once I had three trimmed, I placed them together and realized that at least sometimes I would be losing those points to the seam when I sewed them together. That wasn't the plan!

So, I've set the blocks aside for a little thought.

But, I'm making quite a dent in my pink/red stash (which is currently my largest, all by accident). I doubt I'll find a way to use the two or three skulls on pink prints with this quilt, but I'm planning to use a lot of solids, some cherries, some dots, and maybe a few cupcakes too.


And yes, this has had a silly name from the very beginning... more on that when I've made a little more progress.