A Brand New Plan

So I have completely scrapped my original plan for the Three Generations quilt.

I made some of the alternating blocks (as shown in my digital "sketch" in this post). Somehow those blocks were both too plain, and took away too much of the focus away from the vintage pinwheel blocks. I'm not sure how it was possible to do both at once, but leave it to me to come up with something that doesn't work in any respect. : )

(In retrospect, I think my mistake was that I got lazy and only scanned in one of my grandma's original blocks for my digital design plan. As a result, my "sketch" didn't accurately reflect the colorfulness of the real quilt.)

This is a special project, so I want it to be right. And the star of the show has to be the curved pinwheel blocks, especially the original five that my grandma hand-pieced all those years ago. So once I decided to scrap my original plan, I spent a lot of time thinking about how to better showcase those blocks. I also did some looking around online, and eventually came across this quilt from Red Pepper Quilts:

Pinwheel Baby Quilt by Red Pepper Quilts

Now, those whirlygigs really pop. So, with this quilt as my inspiration, I decided to frame out all my pinwheels in the same blue retro print I bought for the back of this quilt, and then sash it all in some sort of neutral, probably beige. (I love the putty color used on the Red Pepper quilt, but my mom and grandma aren't big fans of anything even close to gray.) Then I'm going to fill it out with a pieced border or two to make the whole thing queen-size, so that my grandma can use it on her bed if she wants.

Of course, the new design plan calls for more pinwheel blocks, so I spent my weekend making eight more colorful curved pinwheels. Now the big push is on to finish this top—I've set myself a deadline on this one, and I'm determined to meet it!