River City Round Robin 3 - Bec's Dresden

After working on Sandra's quilt, I handed it on, and received in turn the project started by the beautiful Bec.

Bec has 3 little girls who take after their mum in that they are kind and kooky and dare to be differnet, but I don't know where they get their loud rambunctiuous spiritis from, becuase Bec is a head-down bum-up driven little bee. I am in awe of her committment to her family and she always seems to be the person to put her hand up to do semthing, but then she gets it done (compared to me, who puts my hand up, but never follows through - don't ask me to do anything, honestly, it's never worth it). And she doesn't it cheerfully, with a smile, and no complaints, and I just love her to bits. I can't even find words for her. She is a wonderful person, who I wish I could be more like.

Bec is a rainbow addict, and her fabric pull was gorgeous all on it's own. All saturated colours and yumminess.

And being a girl after my own heart, she likes some low volume for a background (although, I'm not going to lie, I've used a good portion of my carefully hoarded low volume on you ladies, so this is a sign of great love).  What's the saying, you can tell when a quilter really loves you because she uses the "good" fabric.  Well we've definitely all shown our love through this process.  It helps that we know we're cutting up our pretties to give to someone who'll appreciate what they're looking at.

Bec made an incredibly beautiful Dresden plate for her starter. How gorgeous is that!!!

Bec said that she wanted us to add things that would make her think of her quilty friends.  Well we can do that.  In theory.  

Kathryn added this perfect rainbow flying geese (have I ever mentioned that I'm scared of flying geese? They scream quilt maths at me and I run away in terror).  I particularly love the black/dark grey corners.  They add a moodiness that I really like.

Vic went even further with the crazy perfect quilt maths and added a border of diamonds. And by keeping all the extra white in her border she really brightened it back up and lightened it. (isn't is cool to watch how each addition really changes the look)

And then it came to me.  I, again, sat on this for a while. I really wanted to add a skinny black border to bring that dark moodiness back, but that felt like a cop out.

I ended up deciding to make a rainbow of paper pieced star petals.

I *love* them. The joy of paper piecing is having everything so crisp and neat and perfect. I would never be able to make pointy points like that in real life. And matching in the middle just so... all the heart eyes, I tells ya.

Initially I have planned to do just 4 and have them as corner stones with plain white, or maybe plain white with that skinny black I had originally planned on, but in laying them out, the extra 4 to space them along the sides seemed to work better, and it meant the rainbow was more obvious, which I liked. And the black felt not quite right, because it stopped just shy of the star rather than going into it so I ditched that idea.

In the first round the rainbow colours went in one direction, and the second round went opposite. I chose to put my colours in the corresponding position to where the matching colour is on the Dresden.

I know it feels like I've left a lot of empty space, but my theory is that there are still 2 more rounds to go, so there is the possibility it's going to get busy again so this might allow a little breathing room.

I'm really happy with my addition, and I am looking forward to what Sandra and Laura do with it :-). I'll make sure to show you the finished product.

Oh! And if you want to make some star petals of your own, they are a free pattern from Wombat Quilts (who makes the most gorgeous paper pieced and scrappy quilts *in the world*. If you haven't checked her out, you absolutely should).

Have an amazing day, quilty peeps!!!

E xx