Thank You & More

 I appreciated all the comments & compliments on my post a few days ago.

Thank you for sharing your experiences, too.

It is a pleasure being part of  this friendly, encouraging & helpful blog!

I finished the back for that quilt Flimsy Finished & wanted to show what I did with 

the blocks that were rejected for the front.

See that narrow pieced strip running from left to right?

The blocks were either halved or cut into thirds,

then rearranged with other blocks, sewn back together,

and finally trimmed to 5.5" square.

Next I plan to use that idea again & play with those 

original blue blocks Windmills or Winter???!

Flimsy Finished

Near the beginning of June I started a quilt  

which I called Windmills or Winter ???

 (Both are in Cultural Fusion Quilts.)

Because I was going on a quilt retreat with my guild,

I imagined how I thought it would look & tried a couple of test blocks.  

They were okay so I cut the pieces out in advance.

This is not how I usually work & as I made more & more blocks,

I liked the top less & less.

So I put it aside for a while & then started up again,

& now I like what I've made

and look forward to finishing it.

This top is inspired by Sujata's 

Daffodil Dreams

To me it seems to be somewhere between Windmills & Winter.

Windmills or Winter ???

This coming weekend I will be going on a quilting retreat and plan to work on another quilt, the Windmills, from Sujata's book.  My plan is to use blues and grays which I have already cut into squares.  

I decided to try a couple of practice blocks and reached into my scraps box for the larger cuts.  There was not a lot of choice regarding color so I went with what I had, even piecing some of the scraps to make a big enough square.  My two practice blocks are  the ones on the right in the medallion below.

I thought they were so cute that I made the two on the left from stash.  As you can see I am in the process of putting on scrappy borders.  The HSTs are leftovers from another quilt.

I will call this finished when I complete the outer border which you can see at top right.

There was never a plan to make a girly baby quilt.  See what can happen when you are having fun?!

These are my practice blocks and real blocks in some of the colors I will be using.  

They are not yet arranged or sewn together.

As you can see I decided to go with the "Winter" design.

My Toran Is Finished

Quite Happy with the Outcome!

The border is the same fabric as the background ... 

with a few slashes on each side.

The binding is made up of the colorful strips pieced together.

The back is leftover pieces of the front fabric plus some others.

I consider this a practice piece as I was using my new machine &

still misuse some of its features such as the foot thread cutter.

 I used a walking foot with a variegated green thread for two of the

"organic" lines & then switched to a variegated yellow thread &

did my first ever free motion line on a quilt.

(It's the one with uneven stitches between the two greens.)

Playing with Toran Blocks

I think I have a favorite ... or two ... or three ...

How about you?

Is there one arrangement that you really like?

One thing for sure is that I need to make some more

and then perhaps I will decide!

Update

My top is sewn together and I'm happy with it!

There are a few changes from the last post.

Let the quilting begin!

Thank you for the comments last time.

I did audition several borders but in the end decided

not to add another element ...and 

even pared down what I thought would be included.

So-oooooo Much Fun

Before I make more string blocks,

I need to start sewing the curves in these blocks together.

Then I can experiment with them & decide

where I want to go with this.

So many possibilities!

So much fun ... really fun!

A New Direction

While patiently waiting for an email saying that Sujata's book on pre-order was being shipped, I was experimenting with two different ideas on one of my design walls.  One was to use mostly solid string blocks.  Each one had the same diagonal strip and one corner that would be identical in each block.  The other idea was to make improv b/w pinwheel blocks that I had seen demonstrated by Malka Dubrawsky.  Then I got the idea to combine both of these and this is where I am at the moment:

After combining the two ideas, I not only changed the original layout of the string blocks but also all the diagonals to b/w prints and all the matching corners to random strips.  I'm not sure if it will remain this way or maybe I will separate & scatter those pinwheels ... just not sure about the divide down the middle.  For now it will just sit while I think about what I feel it needs.  If there is anything you really like about how it's looking, I'd love to know.

Also, I recently finished a quilt that was a combination from what I thought was going to be two different quilts; and I'm working on another that is a combination.  Have you done this too?  For me it's a whole new direction!