Follow Your Own Path (FYOP) QAL - Quilting Suggestions and HST Ideas

Welcome to an extra post for the FYOP QAL. I have been a naughty host and didn't do much of any prep for this week. I've been spending a fair bit of time outdoors in the yard. We went to a couple of greenhouses during the past week, and got a bunch of perennials and some annuals, and have been busy planting in the ground and pots. MacGyver has added another flowerbed, actually two, and it's all really starting to take shape. Yes, I will give some pics in a future post when things start to fill in a bit. Here is our crabapple in all her glory:

So the yard been the major consumer of my time lately, and resulted in no blog posts all week. I have been sewing a bit though!

Here is my third rendition of Follow Your Own Path, which I am possibly naming 'Madly Off in All Directions' since I had originally planned to follow the layout I showed in last week's post, but I made my pink arrows go in the opposite direction to my blues, so here is what I ended up with.

Don't mind the weird shadows; there's another quilt in progress beneath this one! I did the throw size blocks, but made less of them, just nine to get this 40.5" x 45.5" little quilt.

I love the florals. I may just keep this one myself, since I came across a beautiful floral cotton that my aunt gave me when she was cleaning out some of her fabrics, and decided she wouldn't use several quilting cottons. The entire flimsy is made from leftover Benartex ezine projects, with a Kona grey for the shadows.

So for quilting this one, I think I will do a favourite motif, a fat flower with swirls all-over meander. I wrote a tutorial for how to do it in this post.

For the quilt for the ezine I divided the quilt into four sections and did lines spaces 1" apart. This is basically what it looks like:

It really made for a cool effect. I decided to get a bit fancy in some of the arrows with ribbon candy, and extended them into the background here and there.

I could totally see ghost arrows in the background too. You can see more closeups of the quilting in the ezine announcement post. I did a triangle motif in the border just by quilting 60° lines.

Another thought for the throw size I made using 'Believe in Unicorns' fabric is to do organic flowing lines across the quilt top. Lorna of Sew Fresh Quilts is the queen of these imho. I also like to throw in swirls when I do my version of flowing lines.

As for the 64 HSTs we cut away when we made the arrow points, well! I've just remembered that I DID play around in EQ8 with some possibilities...

Menopausal brain fog begone!

The possibilities with HST designs are endless, but here are three ideas I came up with using my original baby quilt leftovers. My goal was to add as little as possible to the HSTs. The cut-away HSTs for the baby size square up to 1.75", and will finish at 1.25", so this means you will have a mini finishing at 13", which includes 1.5" finished borders.

The first keeps colour families almost together but flips opposing corners families to make an unexpected centre.

Keep all the colour families together in quadrants.

Turn the centre four diamonds into pinwheels.

The throw size cut away HSTs square to 2.5",  and will finish at 2", so you'll have a 16" centre, and with 2" finished borders you'd have a 20" square, great for a pillow!

You could do all pinwheels! I think we may have to have a separate link and a prize for this!

I had another idea this morning after the post published:

I may just do this! I'd add a rectangle of grey background at the beginning or end of each column, with a narrow sashing between the columns which should make it about 14" square.

Now, exactly four weeks from today, on June 15, the final parade linky party will open. I am so excited! I've been grinning each time I see someone posting progress or a finish on Instagram!

Remember, even if you do not have Instagram, you can still look at anything posted there. The hashtag pool for this quilt along is #followyourownpathqal, so click on that, and you can see everyone's photos so far. If you are on Instagram, and forgot to put the hashtag on any of your photos, you can go back in and edit and add it. You can always look at my posts too @mmmquilts.