"Movement" across a quilt top
 

The wonderful ladies at my quilt shop often mention "movement" when helping me select fabrics. I'm attaching a pic of a WIP with a charm pack. My tendency is to orient the directional charms top to bottom with the quilt. THe lady I work with most discouraged that saying that having them orient different directions produced movement and that we don't often see a quilt top to bottom. What's the thought?

This layout shows them rather willy-nilly. They are not oriented with the top/bottom of the quilt.

While you're looking - I thought I didn't like the dark/light alternating blocks. Thought about putting them in 4-patches and putting red sashing between these larger blocks. Now I'm about to go back to the dark/light alternating - no red. (Though I do plan to back it with red and perhaps have a small red border. The picture I used as a guide didn't have any borders at all.

It would drive me batty not to have them all in the same direction. The movement comes in the flow of color, IMO. I like your quilt without the red sashing, but would scatter the green charms if possible. A red inner border would be perfect. Are you planning an outer border?

Thanks for such an honest answer. I KNOW there are no quilt police, and it's my quilt, and yada-yada-yada, sometimes I really want to know what someone else thinks. My husband is good at giving his advice, but then he gets a bit hurt when I choose another direction. Here's a shot showing more of the blocks. I see many that need to be moved - the lights in the center..... Sometimes I think I spend more time trying to place the blocks than I did sewing these easy ones.

Same direction, it would also drive me nuts to have it the other way movement or not:) I think her idea would be great on some other quilts, but not this one.

I understand what they are trying to say about movement, and the point might be made for patterned fabric. IMO when the fabric depicts growing things like plants, flowers, trees or something with animals or human figures it just looks wrong to me to not have them the way my "eye" is trying to see them. For me it detracts from the beauty of the piece. That's just me.

It was assortment of these exact blocks that we were looking at when she talked about movement and discouraged me from orienting them all up and down. So ... here's my latest and greatest. I'll leave it out a while and look at it each time I walk down that way. It's getting pretty large. What border would ya'll suggest?

Bands of blue, white and blue or a piano key border in the blue and white. You new placement is fine. Sometimes with a charmpack, you have to give up and sew them together. I've run into that twice and I've only been quilting a year.

i love the no sash...(i like the blocks to tesselate and the sash just stops that), and the movement is what grabs your eye and moves it from block to block, forcing you to SEE it... when the direction is all the same, what you see is an allover pattern, not lots of patterns playing off one another... just my 2 cents...

movement on a quilt can be achieved in many ways- it doesn't have to mean the blocks need to be (willy nilly) color placement adds movement- texture adds movement- the quilting itself can add movement-
if you look at the quilt and your eyes travel over the quilt-does not just stop in one area and not see the whole - your quilt has movement- if you like it going top to bottom go with it- our instincts are usually good
sometimes quilt shop employees (think) that (it's their way or your wrong) they are seldom correct unless working on their own quilts- unless you are using someone elses pattern and making a carbon copy-where everyone is making them exactly the same- go with what you like- your quilt is beautiful= and will still be beautiful how ever you decide to do your layout :)