You will want to go through your stash and pull those fabrics that qualify as an 'oddball' possibility and pair them up with unlikely candidates, a Batik and a novelty, a checkered with a chevron, etc.
It is so fun to look for and put together such odd groups of fabrics! You will really enjoy this part! I have a term for these blocks and I just call them 'reverse color'. I've been wanting to do this for a long time, but have just not taken the time to do so. I'm so glad you are giving me a good excuse to get these type blocks put together! I will more than likely take these 16 blocks used for this demo and make a lap quilt of more of them since I don't have a need for a small doll quilt or wallhanging. I'd prefer a lap quilt that someone could use and enjoy!
I call them 'reverse color' because the actual print goes into the background and the background is used for the pattern. It can make such an interesting statement in a quilt!
Next we have those wonderful 'highlighting' blocks! They do a great job in accenting certain areas of the quilt and it would just be bland without them! These blocks stand out more than any others in the quilt and should make up at least 8% of the blocks in a quilt. (Out of 100 blocks, 8 of them would be highlighting). They are extremely high contrast of the darkest dark meeting up with the coolest cool. They grab your attention and it's what makes your quilt sparkle! We need to know how to make these blocks and where to put them! The highlighting blocks are also the dark blocks we saw in the previous section. In the Placement of Blocks section, I discuss the highlighting block I used as my focal point. Refer to that section on how I used that block.
Now we'll talk about those blocks in the quilt that are there just for color only. They are not a low level block, but say for example you are going with a 'warm' color type quilt and you can see you've used most of the warm colors except it's lacking a yellow color, whether dull or bright doesn't matter, but there needs to be one. You'll be making blocks up just to provide that missing color. We'll just call them 'missing color' blocks. You'll know when this happens. You'll look at your quilt and realize it's missing a certain color. Sometimes when you don't know what to add, you can always add a purple because it contains all the primary colors and will go with any of the colors in the spectrum. It's a safe bet.
Let's say you are emphasizing the color black in your quilt and you realize you need one more or maybe 2 more blocks with that color to carry the theme through. You could use black in your wonky corners only paired up with a strong color and by making the wonky corners bigger and wider, it would fulfill that need!
I did this in one of my blocks (making the wonky parts bigger/wider) so they would stand out more as I wanted to emphasize this particular beautiful color. It is a high contrast block, one of the 3 in this quilt so far, and you'll want to emphasize its dramatic intensity too.