Rainbow Rose QAL Week 2

This week's assignment in the Modern Quilters Ireland quilt-along was to cut the background fabric and put together middle blocks. Reading Ruth's wonderfully detailed instructions about the color choices and the piecing process, I realized I have to finalize my fabric selection to make sure all the transitions were as smooth as possible, all things considered. To help me keep track of everything I made a sketch of the block...

And then glued to it little pieces of the fabrics I intend to use for each part.

In addition to the color gradient explained by Ruth, I put myself an additional challenge of a value gradient, which proved more difficult. The most problematic zone is yellow: although I have a few yellows  to choose from, they are all more or less the same value, because it's light color by definition, it's impossible to have a dark yellow, so creating a pronounced value gradient is tricky. I divided the block into 4 "belts" of different value levels: the innermost square is shaded (color plus a bit of black), the next is pure colors (the way you find them in a paint box), the next is tinted with a bit of white, and the final - with more white. The last one was the most difficult to find, as it turned out I don't have enough pastel colors, so I had to use the wrong side of fabrics a lot.

This little mock-up also helped solve the background dilemma: the outermost fabrics are about the same value as the light grey I was considering as an option, so it had to go and the white came out as an undisputed winner.

The background cutting was swift and uneventful)). Cutting triangles rather than squares was a bit trickier but still manageable. Here are my finished middles:

Don't you think they make a kind of nice block on their own ;))? 

Linking to the Fabric Thread and Yarn link-up