Scrappy Rainbow Saturday--Week 16, 2021

The inspiration for the 1930's Kaleidoscope quilt that I have been making as one of my 2021 projects for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge came from this quilt by Linda Miller that I've saved in Pinterest for several years. 

1930's Kaleidoscope by Linda Rotz Miller

Linda's Flickr albums have an amazing wealth of inspiration. I could spend all day going through her in-progress photos. I've learned so much about quilt design from looking through her photos and reading her comments.

I've been making kaleidoscope blocks from my 30's fabrics for the RSC since the beginning of this year. I have made half of my blocks each month with white triangles on the outer corners. The other half of my blocks were octagons without any outer corners because my contrast fabric hadn't been selected yet. I auditioned some color options back in January, but I only had a set of pink blocks made at that point. Now that there are blocks in four different colors, it feels like the right time to decide on the contrast corner fabric. I ordered three different colors of Chambray Tonals from Connecting Threads during a recent sale.

My original plan was to use a pale yellow like Linda's quilt at the top of this post. Keeping the contrast low between the alternate corners and the white background helps make the circle design more visible. Unfortunately, the yellow I received was brighter than expected and didn't really work as well as I'd hoped.

Chambray--Light Honeysuckle

My favorite option from the original auditions in January was aqua, so I got some of the chambray in that color. This one was good, but didn't excite me as much as I thought it would.

Chambray--Light Aquamarine

To my surprise, the color that worked best of the three purchased was the mint green. This one keeps the contrast low enough, plus the green has the truest 30's feel to me. We have a winner! 

The following two photos both show blocks with the light mint chambray. They were taken in different rooms, one with the blocks laid out on a table and the other up on my design wall. It's surprising how different the color looks in each photo.

Chambray--Light Mint

Now that a decision has been made, I have started cutting into that mint fabric and gotten the corner triangles added to the blocks that need them. It feels good to move on to the next step of this quilt project. Here are some finished blocks in all the colors with their minty corners added.

Be sure to check out all of the wonderful scrappy projects at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge every Saturday and at Oh Scrap! over at Quilting is more fun than Housework on Sunday.

Julie in GA