Rowing Along With ROM

I am not finished with August's Row. It almost helps when you are in a group and some of the participants finish earlier. One of the women expanded her 2.5" block border to be three deep, so I pulled more of my squares and pinned an extra row. I like that idea of pushing out the borders rather than doing more blocks.

Others are playing with sizes and going off the pattern. I elected to stay with the pattern this time and see where it takes me. New. Another thing to see is their use of color. It almost takes some of the mystery out in as much as I can see what I like when others do the same pattern.

So when September's Row was issued EARLY, I wasn't ready. I hadn't finished the August Umbrella row. Then I remembered it was still August and I could 'just keep rowing'. 

September's Row is the Spool pattern. As a scrappy quilt, made by shopping from the closet, the challenge is finding fabrics that work for the pattern and coordinate with the row as well as the one above. I dug through the bins to find 6 horizontal fabrics for the thread section of the spools, with 6 coordinating fabrics for the spools themselves. Some participants used the same fabric for the spools. Others coordinated the thread section with the spool section, and I liked that best.

I have had enough experience with these mystery quilts to know that COORDINATION is a top priority. I also want the backgrounds for all the rows to give some sort of flow for the eye to rest upon. All the scraps for each row are going to make it look busy. Busy is OK, but so is resting.

Did I just write that????