tea time – 2

Here’s where I’m at with my Tea Towel Challenge hosted by Victoria Findlay Wolfe at 15 Minutes of Play.: 

Here’s how I got there:

• To make the first border, I cut each column of flying geese (from my never finished placemat) in half. There was just enough length to go around the towel perfectly.  But it seemed to need something to separate this border further from the tea towel.
• So I dug into my stash again. I found iron-on black bias tape and polka dotted thin grosgrain ribbon and came up with this. Hmmmm – maybe. I do love that ribbon after all!
• I didn’t have a lot of red scraps so I made fabric with them. I wanted to add bits of color to my previously made drab railroad blocks.  So I made tumbler blocks of various sizes wih my red made fabric.  I auditioned them – but it wasn’t working for me. Those railroad blocks are still so dark and muddy. I left them hanging on my wall and decided to take a fresh look in the morning.
• A stroke of serendipity!  I stumbled onto a blog and found the perfect way to insert color into those railroad blocks.  It’s Amy Gibson’s tutorial for Night Sky: A Floating Triangle. So I chopped up my tumbler blocks, added more white to those made blocks, cut these into smaller rectangles and made two floating triangle blocks. Lookin’ good!
• I still have more decisions to make: Do I skip the polka dot grosgrain ribbon?  Do I make floating blocks with solid white and black centers? Do I make odder shaped centers instead of triangles?  I’ll answer these and probably more on this journey but for now I’m happy where this is headed! More importantly I’m having so much fun doing it. I love just chopping up fabric any way I want!