Rethinking the Quilt Top

On the first night of Quilt Camp, we had a show and tell session--we were supposed to bring a quilt from home.  I grabbed the one that was easiest to bring, the one that I had quilted during my last Quilt Camp in October of 2020:

As I held it up, one of my Quilt Camp friends said, "And what you don't know is that every part of this was done by hand, the piecing, the sewing, the quilting, all of it by hand."  During the first day here, I have learned that cutting with scissors is also retro.

I look at that quilt, and I think of all the odds and ends of fabrics I collected--fabrics for the wedding quilts of my sister and the fabric I picked up when buying other fabric for the baby blankets of many friends and family.  I see those pieces of fabric and think about the quilting friends who were with me when I shopped for fabric, friends who have moved away or died.

I have spent the last few days surrounded by people who sew on fancy machines that cost more than any computer I've ever owned, and one woman has a machine at home that cost more than my car.

I look at the above quilt, and I wonder about my current approach, which is also using long, wide strips.  At the time I made the autumnal quilt, I was in a hurry to be done with the quilt top and to get some of the fabric that I had out of the way--that led to the long, bland patches on the left of the quilt in the picture above.

At our show and tell on night one, one of my fellow participants told of a class she took where they were supposed to cut apart a quilt top they didn't like and reassemble it.  She didn't have a quilt top that she didn't like, so she took some fabrics that went together, sewed a top out of strips, and cut that apart.  Here's what she ended up with:

I wonder what would happen if I looked at the panels I've been assembling in a different way.

What would happen if I cut those strips into smaller rectangles and mixed and matched them?  I will spend time thinking about this.  

Earlier in the quilt retreat, I was in a hurry to be finished with the top.  But now I'm thinking that maybe I should go a bit more slowly.  I don't make as many quilts as I once did.  I could take an additional day and make this one be a bit more interesting.

Here's my original idea:

And here's what I'm thinking of this morning:

Let's see what the day brings!