Electric Quilt to the Rescue

It felt so good to resolve one UFO problem that I decided to tackle another today, maybe related to a leftover 4th of July mood.  See the blocks up there?  I starting cutting the pieces back in May of 2007, according to this blog entry.  Yikes.  I know I sewed the blocks at one of the ranch retreats, and put them up on a wall and decided I liked them better on point than straight.  I remember that I was unsure how to set the blocks, and after input from all my retreat buddies, I came up with a brilliant solution which I scribbled on a sheet of paper and tucked away because it required different fabric than I had.  You can guess what happened next, right?  By the time I got home and found time to look at this project again, I had no clue what the scribbles meant.  No clue whatsoever.

Which explains why it has been sitting in my closet from 2007 until now.

(By the way, in case you want to know, this block is called Dolly Madison's Star.  I used a pattern designed by Becky Goldsmith called "Dotty Stars."  Hers was all done with bright polka dots.  You can find the pattern online and free here.  )

After putting it up on the wall and testing out some big fabric pieces (you can see above I tried a light and a dark blue option) I returned to my original (vague) idea that those corner triangles need to be pieced.  Here is when my Electric Quilt software comes in VERY handy.  It's ideal for testing out design options and color choices without a whole lot of drawing on graph paper.

I started by drafting the basic block I'd already sewn, so I could set up the center field I already have.
  

 And then I started playing, experimenting with different blocks and color options. 

 

 

It's not hard to get carried away trying lots of options.  It's so easy to just drop color into squares to see how things look.  Fortunately, I remembered that the goal is to come up with something I will actually SEW.  At the moment, the one below is the one I think I like best,  or maybe the one in the middle above... both have enough piecing to look detailed but not too complicated to take away from the center blocks, either.  It's really just nine patches so the sewing should be easy.. 

Of course, I could just try a few more designs.... I just had another idea that I think I need to try out. Who knows where this will go?