Actually Starting Ice Cream Soda: The Second Round

Hello Friends and Welcome Back!

After planning to start Ice Cream Soda back in January and finding myself a little too busy, I've finally had the chance to begin piecing my newest project!

I cut several sets of centres to bring with me to the family cottage over this past long weekend, and while those who enjoy it were out ice fishing, I spent many happy hours sitting by the fire, watching Murder, She Wrote, and stitching together my first set of block centres!

Now, with those centres put together, I'm excited to get started on the next rounds of my blocks and wanted to document my fabric selection process!

Ice Cream Soda was designed by Jody Godfrey of Tales of Cloth. The pattern is currently running as a quilt along, scheduled to end in July 2024.

Methodology

When I originally posted about my plans for Ice Cream Soda, I wanted to follow the block by block method of assembly. However, after re-reading some of the advice shared by Tales of Cloth, I found myself to be more drawn to the working in rounds method!

Throughout my process of selecting fabric for the second round of my February blocks, I'll be referencing some of that advice, specifically that found in the following two posts:

Godfrey, Jodi. How to Start an Ice Cream Soda Quilt. Tales of Cloth, 15 January 2024, https://www.talesofcloth.com/blogs/blog/how-to-start-an-ice-cream-soda-quilt.

Godfrey, Jodi. My Quick, Easy Formula for Choosing Fabrics for Ice Cream Soda Quilt. Tales of Cloth, 29 January 2024, https://www.talesofcloth.com/blogs/blog/my-quick-easy-formula-for-choosing-fabrics-for-ice-cream-soda-quilt.

Definitely check them out if you're at all curious about English paper piecing, the Ice Cream Soda quilt along, or just want to look at some pretty quilt blocks!

Block Centres

And, of course, we can't get started on the second round of my blocks without first taking a look at the block centres!

The central unit of the blocks used in Ice Cream Soda is comprised of six diamond shapes which come together to form a six pointed star. I cut pieces for fifteen block centres to bring with me over the weekend and was able to get all of those basted and sewn together before returning home!

In the fabric selection post, Tales of Cloth recommends choosing small prints or blenders for the block centre. However, I've seen lots of blocks across social media that use larger, fussy cut prints to create beautiful effects too, and with my fairly limited selection of prints, I wanted to incorporate each of them into at least one block centre, so I ended up disregarding that original advice.

Looking at just the centres, I really do prefer the effect of a lot of the fussy cut centres over that of the blenders! I'm especially fond of the two floral centres in the upper left of the picture!

But there's every possibility that I may prefer the blender prints as centres within the finished blocks, so we'll have to add a few more rounds and find out!

The Second Round

The next layer of the Ice Cream Soda block uses six kite shapes, expanding the block into an even larger six pointed star!

The advice from Tales of Cloth is to choose a fabric for this second round that contrasts the block centre in some way, such as using a contrasting colour or through variation in print!

For colour contrast, we could pair a dark centre with a lighter fabric, or a light centre with a darker fabric. With my black, white, and gold colour scheme, the greatest colour contrast will be between black and white, but there is enough contrast between any two of those three colours to be noticeable!

Creating contrast through variation in print can also be extremely effective!

Pairing a very busy print with a solid or semi solid can be used to create contrast. The prints I used for these centres are all pretty busy, in fact, most of the prints I'm using are pretty busy, so I might incorporate some additional solid and semi solid fabrics into my colour scheme to create areas of rest within the composition of the quilt.

I won't be buying any more fabric for this quilt, so I'll take a look through my remnants to find suitable fabrics!

Another way to contrast prints is by pairing different types of prints, such as florals with geometrics. Because of the bee theme of my fabric, I have a lot of both floral prints and geometric prints that might work really well together!

I'm excited to continuing trying a few different combinations as this afternoon progresses!

Scale of Prints

One final challenge when selecting fabrics for the second round of my Ice Cream Soda blocks is to consider how the finished size of the piece will look beside the block centre.

All of the photos I've shared so far show the centre unit beside a big chunk of another fabric, so they don't give the best impression of how that print will look in scale with the one beside it. I really should have shown just a little corner of each print, since the size of the kites are really not that much larger than the diamond pieces used in the centre.

And there's also framing to be considered, since fussy cutting can be used to frame prints in such a way that they produce a particular effect. Of course, I'm pretty new to fussy cutting, so I don't have the best grasp of exactly how many different ways that technique could be used in my quilt, or how it may effect the design of my Ice Cream Soda blocks.

I'm planning to take some time to test different fabrics and select a unique print for the second round of each of my blocks. I've already seen a few combinations I really like through the tests I've shared today!

If you have any suggestions or advice for me as I continue working on this quilt, I would be happy to read them! Please share those in the comments below or privately via email! Once I've selected my prints, I'm sure I'll be sharing a peak at my selections over on Instagram, so please visit me there to check them out!

If you're working through some Ice Cream Soda blocks of your own, I would love to see your progress! You can share photos by tagging me on Instagram or using #icecreamsodaquilt to share your progress with the wider quilt along community!

I can't wait to see what I chose to do with the next round of my February blocks!

Until Next Time Friends, Happy Quilting!

~VA