Memories of Africa - 'Round the Twist

11/16/2022

You may recall my biggest design concern about this quilt is how to use the West African wax print fabrics without overwhelming the quilt with surface design. I have a yellow blender fabric and Foundation Paper Piecings (FPPs) of East African animals to place between the busy patterns. But how shall I put them all together? I google "quilt patterns for large scale prints" to get ideas, and decide on a block called " 'Round the Twist". I have drawn it here in Christmas colors. It's simple: just two units (A and B). The block is meant to be in two colors, but obviously I'll be doing it with lots of prints.

Here's how the pattern works (if you can read my handwriting):

Why yes, I DID misspell "diamonds". *sigh*

I figure I'll use my jelly roll strips for the twining pieces, the yellow blender fabric for the inside of Unit A, and the FPPs for Unit B.

I do a bunch of quilt math and realize I have just enough in my jelly roll for 21 A-units plus the squares to do the stitch'n'flip corners for the B-units. If I have 21 A-Units, then I have 21 B-units. How shall I fill them? I can either do 21 FPPs, or do 10 FPPs and 11 solid squares of some color (maybe more yellow). Because the FPP's are already made the way they are, I will set the blocks on grain, not on point. I can make the quilt top 6 x 7 units, with each unit being 10" square when finished, for a 60" x 70" quilt top; that's about a large throw quilt. I can add borders to bring the size up to a full size bed quilt (85" x 108").

So what might 'Round the Twist look like in my fabrics? Short answer: AMAZING!

Imagine the animal blocks with triangles in their corners.

These colors make me so happy! I spend the better part of a day making 21 A-units and trimming them each to 10.5" square. To each one, I pin the four 3" squares, so I can add them to the neighboring B-units, once I have them picked out and laid out.