Liberated Serendipity

YAY - my finished quilt!  

Approximate size: 48" by 50"
I have entered it into my local guild's annual quilt show - Rising Star Quilt Guild in Lexington, MA - set for the weekend of October 13 and 14, 2012.  Thanks to the organizers of this round robin for the challenge, to Nancy S in joining me on this creative diversion, and thanks to everyone else for their encouragement!

I had so much fun playing with free motion quilting on the larger quilt, that I used similar techniques on this mini-quilt.  I will be donating it to the Guild to sell as part of their Mini-Quilt auction.  I laid the mini-quilt on the back of the larger quilt to get more contrast in the photo.  The mini-quilt is 12" square.

Stepping ahead

This liberated thing is hard. Not sure that I like this block. Sigh.

But let's give it a chance. I started by adding more color.

For Step 2, I had a great time making a whole pile of squares with bits and pieces (ignore the pandas--I was using that quilt as a design wall), but when I put them with my block----yuck. Didn't work. What next?

I didn't know where to go with this. I'm wishing I had done something different. Other people's blocks look so much better. Why can't I be free and easy? Should I start over? And then my sewing machine jammed.
While waiting to get it fixed, I read Step 3: Color. And thought, ok, add more green.

 Hmm. That's enough green. What about more yellow? No. Orange? No. Needs more red.
Someone had left scrap triangles at my guild's free table, and I added more strips to make big red triangles.

And maybe add just one little square in the middle?

Leaving it here until the next step...

star into square

I had the idea of making something round,
so I started out with an asterisk block

and thought I'd add to it, make it more of a starburst 

After cutting again, turning the blocks around seemed more interesting, so I abandoned the starburst and went with the idea of a wonky square in the middle.

This needed something else, so I added triangles to make it a square in square. 

From circle to square---completely different from my starting idea.

Hope I can make it work with the second step.