French Braid Star quilt

Last weekend my Guild had a workshop.  We had a guess speaker in a few meetings back.  She belongs to a group that makes scrappy quilts.  As there was an interest at the guild, to make a scrappy quilt, to use up stash, the speaker agreed to run a workshop for any of the quilts that she had.  

In the end there was more interest in the French Braid Star quilt.  There were many options available, but I was glad to know that this one won out.  We had a great time.  A lot of like minded people getting together to be creative.  The comradery was a blast.  Everyone had a good time.

For me, I raided my solids stash.  I've truly had these fat quarters in my stash for at least eight years, but I believe closer to ten years would be more accurate.  A quilt shop in my area used to send out four fat quarters to a theme of the month.  I did this for almost two year, so you can imagine the amount of solids I had amassed.  For this quilt I used 55 different colours (two strips each).  I didn't use any of my blacks, greys, browns or any really light colours.  The only thing I needed to buy was three meters of the Iron Grey background fabric.

What do you think?  I am liking it!  It has a modern look to it. Very different than my usual choices.  We were to have all the cutting done prior to the workshop.  I had all my colours set up in a rainbow fan.  I wanted this quilt to be random, so I picked the first colour, sewed it on to the first base square and repeated the process for the next colour and so on until I had a strip on each thirty-six base squares.  Wherever I left off, I started back on the first base square and added the next strip.

By the time the workshop was over, I had five strips, out of the six, attached to the base square.  Everyone else though were making a few blocks at a time.  So it appeared that they were so much further than I was.  I finished the four blocks above after the workshop, at my mom's place.

Here I have a picture of one of the ladies' squares.  She chose to use everything from her stash too.  She had the solid brown fabric yardage and pulled from her beiges and turquoise blue stash.  This is going to look so good.  I mature and elegant looking quilt.

There was another lady that pulled her background fabrics from her stash, and chose coordinating colours.  She also decided to do a slightly different variation of the French Braid Star quilt.  Her blocks include a cornerstone between rows of strips and in her case she also coordinated the placement of each strip, so that the blocks are all the same.  She wanted a more organized look.  It looks striking!

There were many others.  Each one was completely different from the next.  The variety was amazing and each one looked as striking as the other.  The examples above were all using a theme, but some of the others were completely scrappy.  A couple of the ladies had to leave early, so I didn't get a sample of the truly scrappy blocks, but they looked great.

I hope everyone brings them in when they are done.  I really want to see the finished quilt!