Monkey Blocks

Yeah, yeah, I probably shouldn't have bothered telling myself I wouldn't make quilts just for the fun of it this year - because yet again, here I am starting one with no one to give it to!

Monkey fabric from my stash (from at least two designers, I think, but it kind of works together) in a quick stack and whack kind of pattern.

Of all the things that go with quilting, trying to arrange blocks in a layout might be my least favorite part. It's not exactly hard work - not like pulling a too big quilt through a too small sewing machine - but it's not easy either.

Around here, it usually means taking the blocks to the bedroom and working on the fitted sheet. It also means I drag my husband in to help. He's got a much better eye for color and design than I do.

Since there were really only a few variations in blocks, this came together fairly quickly. My only real goals in the layout process were 1) not to have blocks of the same patterns either side/side or top/bottom, and 2) to rotate the seams of the borders long/short/long/short. Whew! Hope I didn't lose you with those technical terms.

Because I only made 20 blocks, I knew this was a little small for a top. So I did spent a little time playing around with different fabrics that I could possibly add as sash between the blocks. My favorite of the options was this navy dot:

Which seemed too dark for the fun of the prints.

So, I sewed what I had together without any additional fabric and wound up with this:

And I thought I was fairly happy - until I started editing the photos for this post. Now I'm really wondering if I should have gone with the navy after all. I'm going to have to add something to help widen it out. I'd been planning on adding some brown textured fabric to two of the sides, but now I'm really wondering if the right thing to do is to unpick everything (horrors!) and add the navy dots in after all.

So, here are two of my options - as illustrated by paint and a lot of copy/paste action:

Crud.

Just seeing that, I know what the 'right' option is. I don't even see a reason to make an image for the third option (the easy one) because I know it's not going to be nearly as good as either of these.

I guess I'd better go measure the navy dots to see if I have enough.

Any suggestions for something mindless on hulu to listen to while I spend the rest of my life picking these blocks apart?