Design Wall Monday #02 – Small But Impressive

Recently, I completed two Ribbon Star blocks from a tutorial at Freshly Pieced in orange and red. When the fabric dust had settled, I found myself left with scrap right triangles from all of my fabrics. Not one to throw things out (unless you’re trashy, and if that’s the case we should have a drink first), I decided to sew all those pieces up into QSTs. That’s quarter square triangles for those not in the know–but, in this case, could easily be quite small triangles! You’ll remember my last Design Wall post had me pondering QSTs, so I thought this might be an exercise on a smaller scale that might help me resolve the other. 

I sewed the white triangles to the coloured triangles, pressed flat (seems to the side!) and then went to the Design Wall. It was like a Mensa brain teaser, and I made sure to take photos of each iteration so I could come back to it when needed. 

I just used my camera phone, but this let me see it through a different set of eyes. I can’t recommend this enough. What you see in person is often influenced by the surroundings, and your own ego. Yes, you do have one! Seeing a photo of it really shows you what colours and placement are working, and how others would view it without the influence of said ego. With technology so easy to use, why not use it?

Here’s the photographic record of the eleven different designs I went through before embracing the last one. Thankfully, I made it to number eleven as it is by far my favourite. To think I almost stopped at number one, stupid is as stupid does.

Once I had settled on the above layout, I went to work completing my QSTs, and then squaring them up to two inch squares. I tried to really take my time on the piecing and seam matching as I didn’t want all this time spent to be in vain, and wind up with dodgy points. I ended up pressing some seams open to reduce bulk, as there’s a whole lot of seams happening on the back side of this block.