Nesting Ducklings - March 2014 BOM

The learning curve is still here!

The four pink triangles in the outer corners are made from a single piece of fabric. Because of the pattern on the fabric I ended up with one triangle with dots, two with spirals and one with V's and dots. I didn't have any extra fabric to fussy-cut, so I had to make do with the fabric that came in the kit.

I think the pink fabric would be really pretty if you used it in a quilt that only had a few different fabrics and if the pink was used a lot. It doesn't work if the pink is only used a tiny bit and there are lots of fabrics a lot of the fabrics are similar. 

Which brings me to my next point. Here we have a close-up of the fabric used for the eight pinkish triangles in the center square. 

I'm going to call it "snakeskin" so it will be easier to follow along. I have no idea what it is really called. I believe this snakeskin fabric was provided in the kit. I liked it, but it turned out not to work as well as I expected.

The eight snakeskin triangles don't contrast very much with the four outer pink triangles. Luckily, the contrast is a little stronger in good light than it appears in the photo. 

The snakeskin also turns out to be a fabric that does not work so well if you have too much else going on and you are using very small pieces of it.
 
But, the bigger problem with the snakeskin triangles is the directionality of the print. I didn't realize this issue until later. When I first started working with the snakeskin, I "saw" an interesting swirl of colors and some dots. I didn't "see" that the dots formed parallel lines until much later. By that time, I had finished the block without realizing that I had three of the larger triangles going vertically and one going horizontally. That is not the look I was aiming for.

Finally, I'm not thrilled with the inner light green squares. I think it is a beautiful print, but the scale of the print is too large for the scale of the piecing, and the color is so pale that there is not enough contrast with the white background pieces.

Lessons Learned:
1. Avoid directional prints. There won't always be an obvious stripe, so look at the pattern carefully.
2. Avoid small-scale patterns if they only repeat on a large scale, such as the pink fabric.
3. Avoid large-scale patterns, such as the light green. You lose the design when you cut it up into small pieces.
4. Avoid low-contrast fabrics, especially when they are going to be touching.