Case in point: I picked up a charm pack of "Figures" by Zen Chic for Moda at Quilt Festival.
And I would love to know how many start the quilt without an end game.
I did this time.
I made nine-patch blocks with white centers.
Then I stared at them on the floor all lined up in a grid (I like to create obstacle courses for people trying to get in and out of the room... ha.).
And I stared. It just didn't do anything for me.
I kept staring for weeks.
And weeks.
And I found something else to work on. (Lots of other things.)
And then after a while it just smacked me.
Set it around a hexagon in a squares and equilateral triangles layout.
Easier said than done.
I'd never calculated anything like this.
And I've not done much with Y-seams in general.
They are a bit time consuming and little more tedious than lining up the usual points in a quilt, but it was exciting to try something that stretched me a bit.
And the centered "medallion" aspect makes it particularly pleasant to me.
I didn't want the middle to be a "boring piece" with too large a gap in the design and no focal point so I re-engineered a star into it.
The center star actually required me to rip apart two of the nine-patch blocks, but the whole thing required 40 charm squares and some background yardage.
And to further accent the medallion aspect, I did irregularly spaced concentric circles for the quilting.
Pretty sure I traced every circular object in my house... to get it started in the right direction. All of the lines past the first circle of blocks had to be echoed around the inner circle using the markings on the walking foot because I couldn't find any larger circles to trace.
And of course I chose a large scale print for the back like I always do... well, almost always.
No absolutes here.
It finished at about 39" x 39".
