Size Matters blocks - January

This year I decided to join the Moda U (I think that's what it's called. Update: apparently if is officially called Moda Friendship) group at the Front Porch Quilt Shoppe down in Ozark.  We will be doing the Size Matters blocks from the Moda blog-hop back in the fall.  Each month we will be getting the directions for two or three of the blocks and making them in whatever size we like.

There are 27 blocks in the series and I only wanted to use each block once, which creates something of a challenge.  I also liked the idea of using more than one size of block, since we would be getting directions for multiple sizes.  After much consideration, and much sketching, I came up with a layout and a size that I liked and figured up how much fabric to buy.

I went down to the quilt shop and wandered through the various fabric collections.  I had originally considered something bright and spring-like, but couldn't settle on anything that I liked well enough for the design I had chosen.  I finally decided to ditch the bright/spring idea and went with a layer cake of "Sweet Pea" fabric from Kansas Troubles.  They have great lights and darks in the collection.  However, I ended up getting my background fabric from the "Icicle Kisses" line, also by Kansas Trouble.  I really think that anything from Kansas Troubles would work well in the quilt, and I plan to pick up a few fat quarters from some of the other KT lines the next time I'm in the shop.

Here is a picture of the blocks I made from the January instructions.

Two are six inch blocks and one is a 12 inch block.  As the diagram above indicates, I will be making 15 blocks in the larger size and 12 blocks in the smaller size.  After making these blocks, I'm thinking that one layer cake may not be enough fabric for the blocks anyway, so I'm really likely to need those extra fat quarters before all is said and done.  And, of course, making blocks that I'm not happy with and starting over doesn't help matters any either.

I liked the idea of using a dark and a medium fabric on this block instead of a dark and a light.  I thought that having the lighter colored background in the fabric would give enough contrast, but I just wasn't happy with it.  It is much more striking in the dark and light fabrics.