Tulapalooza Hearts Crossed block

Hello everybody!

Just sneaking this in before the end of August, here is this month's block. It was a very simple quick one, using the free Heart Crossed pattern by In Color Order.

As with all of these blocks, the pattern is for a whole quilt. To turn it into a block, I decided on a simple 9-patch, with four crosses. Here is my fabric pull.

I was going for coherent, with a bit of a scrappy feel. I decided on just the one colour for the crosses (the pink) and attempted a purple-blue-green colour gradient from top to bottom with the background squares. It also gave me an excuse to cut into my newly-acquired piece of Pinkerville fabric and to fussy cut a Loch Ness Monster.

I have been working quite slowly this month, as I have had the kids off school. The pattern itself came together quickly, but I worked in such small bursts that it took me over three weeks. It is easily doable in an evening, even working by hand like me. Here's a couple of in-progress shots.

I played around quite a bit with the layout of the 9 squares. My original intention was this:

And I tried a few other ideas:

My husband convinced me the pink was so strong that the crosses needed to be balanced rather than random. I really wanted to keep the gradient effect. By laying out the crosses in a sort of Y shape, I managed both.

Part the reason I wanted to keep the gradient was because I had cut the pink so that it had the lighter strips in the darker background squared and vice versa. So in terms of value there are two gradients, going in opposite directions. You can see what I mean a bit better in this black and white filtered photo.

Also, please admire these spun seams on the back! I usually forget to do this, even on something as simple as this block.

Thanks for reading!