I haven’t sat at my sewing machine for the past couple of days. There are a variety of reasons, but I think the most fundamental reason is that I am not loving my Orca Bay. But I may have found a solution.
The picture above is ‘as designed’ if you factor in my color choices (one string geese is turned wrong). The orange, which I love, leaps out and is almost confrontational. My DH suggested using another color for the orange — but for the life of me I’m not sure what I would use — and I really don’t want to have to re-make those blocks.
I tried something different. I turned the geese blocks the other way (well, perhaps all but one block). I can’t explain it, but something about this layout works. Maybe it’s the more even distribution of light and dark.
Side by side I still can’t explain it. I haven’t decided if I need to turn the orange blocks or not. But at least now I feel I can continue working on this top. Of course the whole thing may get packed up as I need to finish a couple of other things before the end of the year.
That’s the same layout I ended up with for Orca Bay. I left the orange strings as you have them – I liked the way they make the dark stars radiate out. I had a lots of input (since i was working on this at the PatchworkTimes retreat in Feb), and everyone agreed this was the best choice after I rotated blocks innumerable times to find “the” layout.