Staying Neutral

Neutral: Lacking hue; achromatic; lacking saturation.

I try to keep a pile of different neutrals on hand for all my sane quilting blocks. It's a personal challenge to find different ones when I shop. A lot of swaps call for WOW (white on white) or COC (cream on cream) and it is amazing what variety of neutrals people find. Neutrals are also supposed to give the eye a place to rest.

In the Tone on Tone CQ RR I recently received a set of neutral colored blocks and had to pick one to stitch on. As you can see, there are a variety of neutrals; however, in order to make a difference on the block I had to also create some contrast with my stitching.

Lace, bullions, french knoots, button with cast-on stitch and beads.

Main focus was these bullion stitch flowers and leaves I added in the large middle area of Candji's block. The leaves kind of mimic the ones in the cloth.

Rambling ribbon, star button, herringbone stitch with further embellishment plus half wheels on another seam.

Couched rambling satin cord, cream colored roses, kiko stitch flowers, beads, butterfly button.

Entire block. Those stitches in the lower left corner were already on the fabric.