A new adventure

 An extra couple of weekends and I finished the Plus/Cross border on the Aviatrix Medallion.  It has a real glow about it... especially on this particularly gloomy and overcast day.  The next border is a log cabin round and I have decided to work on some other projects and tackle this one next month.

I signed up for a new BOM with my LQS - The Country Yard.  This is called The Scrappy Star Quilt Adventure, the gist of it being you receive four fat 1/8th of coloured fabric and a fat 1/4 of background fabric... plus instructions... each month.  Exactly what you choose to do with your fabric and instructions is up to you.  This was a challenge I couldn't resist.

The first month's fabrics... and the instructions for a Saw Tooth star, in 6", 9" and 12" sizes.  Month one also had some suggestions for final layout just incase you're the kind of person who needs to know this.

My first reaction was to look through my stash to see what fit the flavour of the fabric in this months pack.  I felt like this light blue patterned fabric gave a new feel to the fabrics... a little bit more contemporary, and brought in the possibility of more colours, while still creating a link with the original colours.

Then it was a hit and miss trial of more fabrics...

And more... decisions about whether it created too much variety... like was it too different?... or did it still feel cohesive?  These were the easier additions... somewhat neutrals... greyish blues and a soft mustard.

And these were more difficult... something to match the rust fabric, and some darker notes... I must admit that I am waiting to see what other fabrics are in the next few months before I get too carried away with adding these darker fabrics.

And some low volume options.

The background in the pack is quite cream, with a white print.  I have quite a lot of this text print, which is an off-white, with a beige print similar to a watermark underneath the black text.  I think this adds a lot of flexibility... tying into the cream without being a perfect match.

Looking closely at the neutrals featured in the navy print... there are some lovely neutral tones... hence that pale mustard and also some greyish and blue prints.

Here you can see how the different prints relate... to me they make sense.

And the first block!  This one is just 6" and uses a small wonky log cabin using various scrap low volumes that I have had lying around my sewing room for the last few months and just happened to be around the right size.

Then a couple of 12" blocks...

And another 6" block.

I used some of the offcuts to mock up some filler blocks just to get a feel for it.  At this stage I'm just going to make blocks and see what happens.  These blocks really play with value placement - it has been a fun day of sewing!

I'm wondering if I should set myself some rules for each month.

Ideas could be:

* Using a improv scrap centre for one block

* Using at least one print from the pack in each block

* Having at least one block that doesn't use the background print from the pack

* Adding a variation to the block design (eg the corner squares in the yellow block)

I will have to wait and see what month two reveals.