Having been a quilter nearly 35 year ago, I occasionally find myself thinking about blocks and patterns and longing for the tactile enjoyment that handling and working with fabric brings.

Bonnie and I have talked a little about paper quilts and how we might incorporate them into the AJA or other journal work.  By “paper quilts”, I mean blocks that are made from cut paper.  In the quilt world there is a technique named paper piecing, which is not what I’m working toward.  Instead, I want to use scrapbook paper to build the blocks.

With that in mind, I decided the prompt for this week’s page would be a quilt block and to incorporate one into the page.  If only the page had gone to plan…

My original idea was to create the double pinwheel block and make it the focal point of the page.  I have a tendency to hoard 6″ x 6″ paper pads.  I like the scale of prints in this size and when you buy a pad, the papers all coordinate.  I pulled out my stash and paged through them till I found prints and colors I wanted to work with.

The first step was to cut 3″ squares from each of the papers.

If you look closely at one square, you’ll see it’s made up of one triangle that is a square cut in half on the diagonal, with the other half two smaller quarter square triangles.  Those quarter square triangle are made by taking one of the larger, half square triangles, and cutting in into two.

This arrangement is the usual double pinwheel where you have a large one (made of the yellow pieces) and then a smaller one (made of the orange pieces) that also rotates around the block.

This is a alternate arrangement of the same pieces used in the first block.

After trying both arrangements on the page I realized that I disliked the look when they were just plopped on it, so out the door went that idea.

The background was a bit too plain, so I used one of the Lindy’s Starburst Sprays named Crème Brule Cream and misted it over the entire page.  I’m not generally a person who likes gold, but I always make an exception for this color and find myself reaching for it fairly regularly.

Since I gravitate toward the use of borders, I guess it’s no surprise that as I moved the triangles around I ended up with this.  Of course this was not anywhere close to what I’d imagined the page would look like, so I was left having to figure out what to do next.  Happily, I’m surrounded by inspiring stuff, with the latest being new collages sheets I created last week.

This one is named Summer Flowers and the colors were a good fit with the triangle border I laid out, so I began cutting out elements and arranging them on the page.

Yeah, I like this, but there’s a gap there that feels a little too open.

Look closely and you’ll see a skinny vertical box I penciled in.  A quick search for flower quotes yielded one I like…

So I penciled it in to see how the layout looked, made some adjustments, then used a PITT Pen to write the final version.  So there you go, week 22 is finished.  While it wasn’t what I had in mind when I began, I’m satisfied with the outcome.  I think there will be more paper piecing in my future!