Playing on the Design Wall

I always tell quilters that sorting my fabric stash (and scraps) by color was so enlightening for me.  I was reminded of this when I pulled out some I-spy charm squares and sorted them  by background color.

I needed eight 5-inch I-spy squares with a similar colors for background for each block.

• I didn't have but a few orange ones.  
• I only had enough of purple ones after cutting a few more squares from my stash. 
• I probably could have made a few more blue blocks, and
• I had a lot of greens, but not a lot that were similar enough for this project.
• I had more I-spy squares with white backgrounds than any others, but, since I was planning to add a white fabric and needed contrast with all the squares, those will be used in another quilt design that's been percolating in my head for a while. 

My idea was that from a distance, you'd see a white star on a print background in various colors, but up-close, you'd see that the background around each star was actually 8 different fabrics, with lots of interesting I-spy characters.

For the star points, I added 2 3/4 inch white squares, using the method often used in snowball blocks.  After I trimmed away the (smaller) triangles from the corners, I used them as leader-enders while I sewed the blocks.

It didn't take long until I had nine 13 1/2 inch square blocks.

And then the fun could begin. I arranged and re-arranged the blocks on the wall until I was happy.

  

  

I didn't think about how many possible combinations there might be, when I saw this one on the wall, I decided it was good and sewed it together.

Here's the completed top along with the pinwheel blocks I made from the bonus triangles.

I don't know if this would have happened so quickly for me without a design wall. 

The pinwheel blocks at 3 inches (finished size). The eagle eyes will notice that almost half of them are spinning in one directions and the rest are going the other way ... I haven't decided if I will fix them before I sew them into a doll quilt–taking half of them apart may be one of my Sunday night TV-watching handwork, along with some more of the stitched words that have appealed so much.

I don't know if I would have noticed my dyslexic group of pinwheels if I hadn't put them up on the design wall ... I only wish I had done so when I was making them, so I could have see this oopsy sooner.

I'm joining Kathy's Slow Stitching Sunday and Judy's Design Wall Monday.