The Capital T Quilt Block for me was a lesson in color. I changed so much in this quilt block. Most of the changes were made to make the assembly easy. As you can see I also discovered something about color.
Tips and Tricks
When I saw this quilt block I knew I was going to make the flying geese the 4 at-a-time method. I did it that way so I wouldn’t waste fabric and my accuracy in making the flying geese would also be great.
I also cut the fabric for the half square triangles (HSTs) 1/8th” bigger. Giving me that all-important wiggle room for error. I trimmed the HSTs down with a Block Lock ruler.
I pressed all the flying geese open but all the other pressing directions listed in the book I followed. I like pressing the flying geese open so I can always see that I will not sew over the nose of my goose.
Lesson in Color
So as you can see I wanted to play with the color on this quilt block. The way that my leftover pieces of fabric came out I decided to do two different color placements.
On the one hand, I decided to make purple the center and the corners of the larger two quilt blocks. I did this thinking that the purple and blue would almost have a cool folded-over look in the quilt block.
On the other hand, I didn’t have enough small scraps for the smallest quilt block. So I could only make the star points in the center of the star purple.
The reason why one quilt block looks better than the other two is because of color value. Value refers to how light or dark a color is.
The small quilt block sets off the small purple star and the blue and green have a folded-over look around it. It allows your eyes to rest on the star and travel naturally outward.
The two larger blocks don’t allow your eye to rest. You know a star is in the block but you can’t quite look at it without moving your eyes out to the purple corners. So your eyes do a juggle back and forth effect just to see what you know is there.
This is because the value of the color purple is so dark. The value of blue and green are much lighter.
If I had known this lesson ahead of time I would have made all three of my quilt blocks look like the small quilt block. Live and quilt I guess.
Did this help you in understanding color and color placement in a quilt block? If you did, share this with a friend and leave a comment below telling me which was most helpful.
