Jessica's Autumn Block

I finished Jessica's twelve square block for November a couple of weeks ago. She sent the green print and the dark brown print. All she said was that the theme was "Autumn." Wide open. I love autumn, as we all know, but the color scheme of this block was a bit of a departure from when I usually associate with autumn: orange and red. It's very neutral and earthy, both of those are good things, though.

I had a few different thoughts on the direction to go with this. Leaves came to mind, of course. I had inklings to do a rough edge stacked kind of thing with leaf shapes, ala Amanda Jean's tutorial. But in the end, I went a bit more abstract. Shocker, huh? I thought the green print would be lovely as a sort of ground for other bits of color in the block, since it wasn't too busy, and there was enough of it to use alot. I pulled in a bit of orange, but tried not to let it overpower the block, keeping the neutral tones of the fabrics that she sent. I added in some natural linen, and a bit of a beautiful little brown and cream japanese print that I received from the always lovely Leslie. I offset short stripes of patchwork in layers coming in from two sides of the block, making them a bit wonky. They remind me of the layers of leaves that fall in autumn, stacking together, or of layers of earth that get bulbs nestled within in the fall. It turns out, I was on the same train of thought as Katie, with the layers and the rough edge idea. This was a bit of a challenge for me to figure out how to make this work the way I wanted it to work, while still keeping an open creative process, but I think I accomplished what I was going for.

I designed it to have the color intruding from the top and bottom, but I don't see a problem with rotating it so that the layers intrude from the sides. And, I made the block a little bigger than the 12"x12". I just couldn't decide what to cut off, so I give that decision to you, Jessica, if you choose to. And that way, if you want to not cut if and have different sized blocks, you can do that too. I hope you like it!