Then I used black, white and gray fabrics in the same design:
The two darker fabrics posed a value challenge: at the store, I thought the speckled one was darker but at home I decided the more uniform one was darker. The whole thing is kind of busy.
For the color version, I used scraps from previous projects (I think I mentioned that I have a kind of fascination with red, green and yellow). I don't know where that pink fabric came from, but I like it against the red.
Then I started seeing trapezoids everywhere and, inspired by one of the designs in the book, I decided to reconfigure the shapes. Also, go back to blues. First I used 5 different values, splitting the long quadrilaterals in half to make trapezoids, but then I decided it was too choppy. So I covered up the medium dark trapezoids that had been in the corners. In the lower left, you can still see the edge of one that wasn't covered completely.
In the process, I discovered why trapezoids are an under-used shape in quilting: it is far too easy to cut them with the wrong orientation! I created a lot of small scraps before I got the long and short edges in the right places. Finally, I decided to reconfigure again to make a more "traditional" block, with more triangles. This also allowed me to use some of my "wrong" trapezoids.
I just wasn't interested in deliberately making an unbalanced design, so I stopped here. It was fun to play with value and color, but I also like shapes!
