One Thing Leads to Another

I am a great admirer of Sujata Shah and have had a lot of fun with her book Cultural Fusion Quilts.

I have played around with several of her designs but, up until now I hadn't tried the wonky hourglass blocks.  Here is one of her quilts: 

Have you ever noticed that, no matter how much fabric you have, it's fun to play with someone else's scraps? One of my good friends is moving and downsizing her sewing room.  She brought over a box of scraps and I pulled out the browns and golds.  I cut 6" squares and placed them in groups of 4, light, dark, light, dark.  I have enough to make 36 blocks.

The method, in a nutshell:

About 2/3 of the way through piecing the blocks, I was wondering if the project would be too dull.  Does it need an accent color?

I thought about Victoria Findlay Wolfe, who I had the pleasure of meeting in NYC two weeks ago.  The title of her book 15 Minutes of Play gave me an idea.  What better way to play is there than sewing strips together a la Rayna Gillman???  I cut some strips from the remaining brown and gold fabrics and added some red.  Then I started to play.

At the end of the day, I stacked things up.  Today I put up a piece of poly batting to use as a design wall.  I arranged and re-arranged and made more strip sets.  Something is taking shape.