Off the Trail and into the Weeds

 I've never been very good at sticking to the path, but I've really gone way off into the wild this time.  Bonnie Hunter released the final reveal for Rhododendron trail and I basically tripped and face-planted.

I'd always planned to substitute another color for the aqua in her vision (I am so over the whole pink/red/aqua/teal thing), so I tried a few other ideas for the narrow sashing she called for. 

A couple of browns...

That was a couple of nopes.

This soft green?  

Maybe...

And then I didn't go up to my sewing room for days. And days.

Now, I am a World Class Procrastinator, but when I'm ignoring something this hard it's a sure sign of it being something I just flat don't want to do.  I love the basic block, I love the hourglasses, but the two together just weren't doing it for me.

Time to drop back and have a think.

So I thunk and I thunk and decided that I'd just go off the Trail and into the woods in a completely new direction.

Grab your canteen and a couple of sandwiches and I'll lead you along to where my fizzy brain took me.  Mind you don't step in whatever that is.  And watch for bears.

My first thought was to try putting the blocks together with sashing.  I had a (not-so) brilliant thought to repurpose some of the bits I'd already sewn.  The pink flying geese blocks were my first victims.

Oh no.  Way too much pink.

Try again.

The yellow triangles making friendship stars at the crossroads looked interesting, so I left them in.

Maybe if I made some flying geese like the pink ones, but used green instead?

And throw in some of those vast stacks of red hourglasses?

A slight adjustment to the hourglasses in the middle of the sashing unit.

And some red squares for the cornerstones instead of hourglasses?

Busy busy busy...  Hmm...

I pulled out the two hourglass blocks I'd made and tried them as alternate blocks with this sashing,

but it wasn't any better.

At this point I pulled everything off the design wall and put it all in a plastic bin and sent it to time out.

And I stewed.  And I spent a ridiculous amount of time on the internet looking at quilt blocks, hoping an idea would spark.

Maybe a different alternate block?  I made a couple of test blocks,

and pulled stuff out of the bin again.

Nope.  Not even if I set it straight rather than on point.

Back into the bin.

I kept looking at the Rhododendron Trail logo on Bonnie's website -

and trying to figure out why I really liked this image but didn't like my version of it.

And then a lightbulb went off in my head.

What if I just recreated the framed corner effect, but using HSTs instead of hourglasses?

I did a quick mockup of corner units,

and decided I was onto something.

(So of course I had to try out a sashing idea too because my brain wasn't overloaded enough)

But I wasn't totally happy with that green.

Maybe try a blue?

Oh my.  Blue is better.

I quickly tried out some of the closest blues and I'm all in.

And there goes that test sashing again.

Now I just need to decide whether to use one constant blue or if each block should have a different one.  (More test blocks?)

I think I'm done procrastinating for awhile.

Oh and those test dummy alternate blocks I made way up there?  Before I knew what I was doing, I'd made a few more in this month's RSC color since they're ridiculously easy to make.

Dammit.  Did I just start another quilt?

Linking with SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday and with Quilting is more fun than Housework for Oh Scrap!  Come see what goodies everyone's building!