progress on terms of endearment blocks

Wendy Poling in her blog, "Sewing in the Wendy City," has inspired me by example to show more of the process of the quilt creation. I was lucky last year at this time to win the "terms of endearment blocks" along with Sophie, and she has already showed her design board, with the liberated roses going along with it. I am not so wonky as Sophie and have been mentally playing with the blocks, and particularly their different sizes (some almost 2 feet long) and how to arrange that in some kind of rectangular quilt (the mind boggles at the prospect of other shaped quilts, but I won't go there!)

I thought about arranging the words so that they would go from small to large and actually form a heart out of the words, but the sizes I had just didn't fit that model.

Then, thumbing through a quilt book, I saw a bright batik "round the world" quilt with multi-colors, and it seemed like a could use the words as a central diamond with the widest words at the center, and then surround them with the graduated colors of the 'round the world" or bargello technique.

I also decided to divide the blocks into 2 quilts, so one will be pink and white, with lime green accent, and the other red and white, with blue accent. (Which has prompted crazy unrestrained fabric purchases !

The two attached photos show the beginning of my design process, with the words laid out in a pink white background alternating order, and the line-up of fabric strips beside them that will make the bargello pattern when sewed together and "shifted"

This is not the final order of the colors, as I think I will reorder to start with a darker pink near the blocks, then going more pastel, and then adding the pink and green and then the brighter t-o-t lime (maybe not shown here). I found a wonderful Moda Love panel on-line that has pink and green that I will use on the back, but it hasn't arrived yet. Also, I think the candy heart print has too much yellow so it may have to go!

To make the true diamond shape, I'm thinking of making wonky strip hearts to go at the top and bottom of the diamond to fill out the diamond pattern. I know I am going to have to do some careful measuring and trimming to get the words to graduate their sizes proportionally so that the bargello pattern has some regularity to it (I'm hoping to use the quick Elenor Burns tube strip piecing method rather than having to cut individual rectangles and individually piece.

I'll post again when I receive my on-line fabric purchases that will fill out some of the color way.