Expanding Stars

Remember these?

In my quest to make the Halloween quilt bigger/longer I'd been playing with some numbers in my head. This is one quilter who is not afraid of the math involved in drafting and designing! In fact, I sort of enjoy it. That may be why I've returned to updated traditional quilt making as opposed to the more freewheeling, liberated stuff I was doing a couple of years ago. In any event, I turned these 12" blocks into expanded 18" stars:

My plan is to build this Halloween quilt in a triptych format, with three distinct sections. You've seen what will be the center section in the last post. Now I'm building the sections that will go on either side. Making these stars bigger established the width of these side sections. But how to tie them all together?

I arranged and re-arranged these six blocks repeatedly, trying to get a balance of colors and images across the whole of the eventual quilt top. Finally I just started cutting strips and laying them in place to see what worked and what didn't.

There's a pile of strips that were cut but didn't make it into the end product. It's a little frustrating because they aren't sizes I normally use. I'm sure they will become something someday though. ;- )

This is what I ended up with:

The vertical black sashing will separate these side sections from the center bit. And we'll see what that looks like in the next post!