Merry Xmas and what happened to December?

 The whole of December has been a bit of a blur... Xmas work functions... kids prizegivings... Dylan getting his wisdom teeth out and Nadia needing to go here and there and needing transport.  And so we finally make it to Xmas day... Merry Xmas and well done everybody!

I have spent a lot of December's crafting hours working on the Ray Quilt by Carolyn Friedlander.  A large log cabin quilt... just the one ever expanding block.

After being alerted to the quilt along by Linda from Koka Quilts I decided to use my fat quarter bundle from Scribbly Gum Quilt Co... (good call Linda)...

Added some odds and ends from stash, some fat 1/8th low volumes  and some long held dear scraps (thanks Suz from Patch n Play) that fit the colour story and I started to get a collection of fabrics that were working well together and gave me lots of variety, a cool side and a warm side without any problems, and graded through from light to dark.  This would be a simple process... she thought... but she would be wrong 😤

The pattern is not overly hard... simple in fact... but making that final decision on where to place fabrics is much harder than you would expect.

I decided it was just easier to just cut and place... then  reassess.  Although I didnt like the beginning... I continued...

It slowly grew...

But I still wasn't happy with the centre so I worked on that for quite some time in the middle of everything, trying all sorts of combinations and placements.

Before finally settling on this combo.  Small changes which i felt made a huge overall change.

I added some extra solid accent pieces through the first couple of logs and this really gave it a strong central focus. 

I realised that improv is not something that I usually do... and I was really struggling with it.   There is no right or wrong answer... what you decide is OK.  But is it really OK? Indecision is not my friend.  Plus I suffer from FOCIAU - Fear Of Cutting It All Up, so that is always in the back of my mind.  In my head there were some areas which seemed wrong... I just couldn't identify exactly what it was... I don't think I am the quilter to just sew things together without having more of a plan (and yet i start lots of things without having a fully formed plan!).   Grrr!!

However, I got past the first few rounds successfully (thinking to myself... i CAN do this) and then decided to break up the heavy orange area which had started to read as simply orange... (fell down another rabbit hole of indecision) before finally finding a grey fabric in my stash that had all the colours... orange, burnt red, teal and yellow... this helped to give the oranges a bit of breathing space and make sense of all the colours.  I also played around with the progression from light to dark and decided to mix this up a bit also.  I am very happy with things so far!

I'm still not quite finished... I have added another grey text row before the teal and red fox fabric... and will need to lengthen the orange strip on the far right hand side... but I like where it's heading... maybe improv might not be my happy place but i am also keen to try a few more exercises and see where it leads me.  Watch this space... and have a merry Xmas!