A Snail's Trail

"Do not follow where the path may lead...Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail."  — Robert Frost

Ok, back to the round Robins.  The next one I received was Ken’s.  I was really please to receive this one.  I’d sort of been on Ken a little to try something more challenging.  So far, most of his quilts had been different color variations of the first quilt he ever made (from a class).  I think he’d made at least 10 of these.  They looked great, but he needed to step outside of his comfort zone a little more.  I was really please to see he’d done a snail’s trail block for his round robin. 

One interesting thing about Ken.  He’s color blind, but rather than be a handicap as a quilter, it seems to work out to his advantage.  His color blindness works out to be a built-in value finder.  As a result, Ken has a very good value sense when it comes to picking fabrics…and he doesn’t get obsess over color choices.  As long at the values provide good contrast the colors all just go together.

The first border, done by my God-child Azureen.  Az loves working with very bright fabrics.  She’d have been right at home in the 60s, since she prefers very bright primary colors in her quilts.  She also loves orange…yet another quilter not afraid of the dreaded orange.

The border itself is a variation of the braid pattern Az learned from Anne Gallo the previous fall. This colorful border pulled out the color from the paint-splatter dots in the inner block.  It worked very nicely.

When I received this quilt, I’d just finished taking the Chinese Lattice class from Carol Miller, the Dean of Quilt University.   Here is my finished Chinese Lattice quilt.  This is still on the UFO list, but I really liked the way the border wrapped around the inner block, and decided to reuse the design here.  And, as chance would have it, I’d just finished a fresh batch of hand dyed fabric…why dye if you’re not going to use it.  This border worked out very nicely, providing a nice calming effect for the bold colors Az used.

Next up was Marcia…and this was an amazing border, with both applique and reverse applique.  The purple background really enhanced the colors of the hand dyes inside of it. 

Outside of that was a simple star design by Emerald.  Once again, because the previous border was complicated, a simple border was used, which set the stage for Cindy to go wild with a scrappy outer border that echoed the colors used by Azureen.