Amy's Circles

Here's my contribution to the birthday block swap for this month - a block for Amy, whose theme was circles. The block could be any size, and the colours were limited to blue, purple, green, black and white. Although I knew I wanted to start with a large white circle on a coloured background with a wave of another colour through it, I wasn't sure at all where I'd go from there - I made it up as I went along. I had intend to photograph every step, but of course forgot to photograph some of them; still, here's a bit of a view as it builds up...



I started (no photo) with a large white circle, which I machine appliqued (satin stitch) to the blue background. I then took the purple fabric and laid it across the white circle and cut a gentle curve with my rotary cutter. I stitched them together, then made another cut and stitched the pieces together again.



I then trimmed the block to 16" square and added a green circle. The next step was to add a slightly smaller light blue striped circle. Another striped circle followed, this one above the purple wave.




Then, the somewhat scary part - and again, I forgot to take a photo - I cut the block apart again to add the black wave - I made the first cut with the rotary cutter (through the black fabric as well) but because I knew I wanted this one parallel and very narrow, I cut the second cut with scissors using the existing black line as a guide. I then added the small blue stripey circle, followed finally by the small black circle. The black fabric actually has small black circles on it as well, adding to the circle theme.

I had originally considered doing something with lots of embellishments on this block, but I couldn't really find anything that spoke to me. Then I saw on someone's blog (can't work out whose now, though the funny thing is, despite the person not being in the swap, the colours were just right!) a block with circles and a wave running through and thought aha! and went off in that direction. If it was you who showed a block in these colours with circles in the last few weeks, do let me know so I can put them link in, LOL.

Woohoo - edited to say, it was Doreen K on whose blog I saw the inspiration - thanks for commenting Doreen - I knew I'd seen one somewhere.