What else I've been doing with my time

After a flurry of novelties, I found myself doing a number of "not novelty" quilts this fall.  Here is a summary

Wedding gift - I discovered I really missed working with color so to compensate I used a wonderful minky-like backing.  The pattern is farmhouse stores by Needle in a Hayes Stack from Connecting Threads.  I liked the secondary pattern but it was pretty fiddly.  I don't think I'll do it again.

Some patriotic quilts for Roll Call - fun patterns but discovered I really did not like being limited to red white & blue.  This first pattern is called Nova by GE Designs.  I did like this one and I think it would work for novelties.  I might give it a try down the road.

Most of the stars in this quilt were made by another member of the guild.  I added a few more to fill in and made the sashing.  The block is nice and easy, no risk of cutting off points since the star floats inside.  I think this is my new favorite way to make easy stars.

This patterns was much more difficult than anticipated, and with the busy fabric the details got completely lost.  I got the idea from facebook and don't know the name of the pattern.  I liked the secondary design between the blocks.  However the fabric that was donated really didn't work with the pattern.  So after making six, I changed and made some easy stars like the quilt above for every other block and you cannot even tell.  This was a lesson in fabric choices.  I should not have used such a busy red or blue for a detailed pattern.  It kind of makes my eyes hurt a bit, soo much going on. 

After the gray, and then the patriotic quilts, I definitely felt the need for some serious color.  A couple of years ago I had seen a scrappy quilt made from little stars & string blocks arranged by color.  So I had started making the little stars (4.25 finished) to use up a bunch of  little tiny triangles, trimmed from all those folded corner novelty quilts.  However my stars were much smaller than the original idea, so my string blocks were much simpler than the original idea.  I added the black diagonal and sashing which changed the look of the quilt significantly.  Very dramatic.  Using strings and crumbs from the scrap bin made a serious dent in my scraps.  This one is much bigger than my usual wall quilts at 72" x 82" so I guess it will go on the twin bed.  It sure is BRIGHT - whee!  But as my son who has taken up painting pointed it, it is not technically a rainbow quilt.  Oh well.  I think I arranged the colors based on how many stars I had made in that color.  And yes, I did fix the one block that is turned.  But It was so big on the design wall I didn't put it back up to re-photograph.

This was the result of a guild workshop with J. Michelle Watts.  It was fun to meet her and show her my Talevera Medallion made from her pattern.  And the workshop was fun and very well done.  I  even got to use a specialty ruler that had been in my stash for 15 plus years.  I took the opportunity to work on my custom quilting skills.  I definitely got more comfortable with ribbon candy in all the pastel sections.  And I was able to use only fabric from my stash.  The color inspiration was the Aurora Borealis paintings that my son has been making.