Gingham ideas

Another goal for July was getting the second teal/aqua Gingham block made for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  Somehow I only made 1 block for that month.  Maybe that was March - when the world kind of blew up in our faces.  This was an easy goal once I actually found some appropriate scraps in the bin.  Now that there are 14 of these blocks (10" square), I started to think about how to lay them out and nothing I came up with made me happy. 

I see too much white next to white when just laying them out next to each other.  And even if I stagger them, there will still be white sections touching white sections.  That definitely didn't look good to me.

Thursday morning I visited a quilting friend for coffee on her porch and I took the blocks with me to get her opinion.  Louise has been quilting much longer than me, and has a wonderful eye for color and design, so I knew she would have some ideas.  And I was right!!!  Louise suggested I frame each block.  So when I got home I added 1.5" frames to 2 of the blocks, and VOILA - it solves that problem of too much white space.  Now to get the other 12 blocks framed out. And the bonus is that now these blocks are 12" square instead the odd 10".   I love how the quilting community comes up with such good feedback when asked for help.