Weekend W.I.P.

This weekend I have been having fun playing with fabric. My local quilting family is doing the "half yard cruise challenge". This was featured in 'Fons and Porter Love of Quilting' magazine in January of 2006, and was also on an episode of their PBS series.
The challenge is to design a quilt using five half-yard pieces of fabric. Each of the five fabrics are cut into four inch strips(four strips each). One strip of each of the five fabrics is cut into one of three specific shapes- a 4 inch square, a half square triangle, and a quarter square triangle. The fourth strip is saved to cut whatever shapes you may need extras of in that particular fabric.
We chose one fabric that we would each use in our designs. My fabrics are shown here cut into the three shapes for the challenge. The common fabric for the group is the holly print on the off white background shown upper left.

I was really not in a hurry to start this project, as I have so very many unfinished quilts already. But I just couldn't help myself, especially when everyone already had theirs on their design wall.

So the fun began Friday morning. I had no idea what I wanted to do. I wasn't even sure I liked my fabric choices. But I was determined to work with what I have and so I began.

This was my first attempt. I liked the idea of a medallion style layout, but that was about it for this one. And so I began again. With this:

Ok, I like this better, but I still wasn't ready to commit, so I tried yet again to get the center started. How about this one?

Getting closer! By now I was having trouble keeping my pieces in place. I decided I would stitch some of them together before moving forward.Lovely! I am definetly feeling it now. :) But there's more...

To be continued tomorrow. ;)