Desert Rose Designing

You know how much I hate piecing.  But in a weak moment, I agreed to consider making a quilt for a really, really good friend of mine.  There was some general discussion of color and theme.  Southwest but with green & blue.  This was what I came up with.  The original historic block "Desert Rose" was even busier, with 3 different colored triangles where I have the light blue stripes.  The way I made the prototype block had tons of Y seams that needed to go away for me to ever consider making another.   

When I set it out as a block to block format, I noticed That the corner blocks made their own stars.  And there is a secondary pattern in the background squares that reminded me of an Irish Chain.  

So I redesigned the block to play up on the secondary stars and the tan block diagonal.

While I really like this, I will look for a tan with more contrast.  And The white squares on the corners would look better as light blue.  

And when sending this mock up to the significant other of the intended recipient, the color scheme flipped.  Everything currently blue will become green and vice versa.  Will also aim for a darker tan for that diagonal line of blocks to stand out more. 

Finished Churndash

My scrap project was mostly a success.   I used up the majority of the green scraps.  Ended up creating more scraps for the yellow background.  Pieced together some odds and ends of batting.  Used up some muslin on the back that I bought for a batik class,  Also used up 2.5 bits of random green and grey binding.

I am finally getting feathers to look the way they are supposed to.  Though I have best success when they are drawn out first, even if I don't actually follow the lines, it helps with the spacing and overall design.