What Happened Next?

 When I wrote this blog a couple of weeks ago, I was working from the centre out on a new quilt, using two sizes of half-square triangles made from African wax fabrics and from solid black fabric. I left you hanging, while I decided what came next. My original idea had been to put squares of different yellows around the centre half-square triangles, and use that as a background, but when I tried that out, the contrast between the black and the yellows was just too much. So that idea had to be ditched. Next I tried out several white on black fabrics, but none of them seemed quite right, until I used two different white on blacks, and sewed them on like I was sewing a Bright Hopes block, with one fabric on the top and the bottom, and the second fabric on both sides of the centre.

I still wanted to put applique shapes - baobab trees and animals, I thought, on the background. But the trees, which I put in each of the four corners, looked like shrivelled up bits of seaweed, not the magnificent giants of sub-Saharan Africa, so off they came. And then the simplest idea of all came to me - why not put circles in three or four sizes on to opposite corners - liberated circles, I like to think of them that way, dancing away to their own music, while the more rigid and mathematically-inclined triangles hang onto their precision and points. I liked this much better. Now it needs to be quilted, and named, and bound in more scrappy lengths of African fabrics. Now I can move onto the next quilt. I think there might be hope for me - seeing one thing through before moving onto the next. Sort-of. Make that working on 4 or 5 quilts at a time before moving onto new ideas. That's an improvement, for sure.