Ugly Fabric Hides Again

My last sewing act before moving away from Oregon was to make a block for the Ugly Fabric Block Challenge.  This challenge is held every year at Something to Crow About, to celebrate April Fool's Day. The staff picks out a fabric they deem "ugly", and customers are given a free square of the fabric with which to create a 12" block.

2013 Uglies -- sashed and sewn together

I have participated the past 2 years. Challenge blocks get hung up in the shop. Hoppers on the Quilter's Safari shop hop vote on their favorite.  The winner gets pretty fabric from the shop, and all the blocks get sewn together into a charity quilt.

2014

2013

 

Why does "ugly" = browns?

This year, a Hunter's Star pattern caught my eye (on someone's blog--sorry I didn't keep track of it).  An online pattern search led to directions for a 12" block--which included both a template version and a paper-pieced version (yay!) 

Thank you to Marcia Hohn at the Quilter's Cache for her many many FREE patterns.

Hunter's Star is a dark/light contrasting block. I let the ugly fabric form one of the dark choices, and dove into my scraps for 7 other fabrics.  I used some pretty bold patterns (cringe--would they play together well?) but tried to balance with low-volume.  This has/has not worked out for me in the past.  I am a risk-taker, for sure.

What do you think?  Did I manage to create a block that was not-so-ugly?

And how might you have used this brown-and-pansy-purple fabric?