I'm still catching up with posting last year's teacher quilts. At the beginning of the school year, it is Fire Monkey's job to ask all his teacher's their favorite color. I then spend the school year making quilts (throw size) that are gifted in the last week or two of the school year. This year, one of the teachers said her favorite color was brown. This one was hard for me. I don't mind brown, but I honestly don't think much about it. It's fine in the background, as a supporting character, but I wasn't really sure what to do with brown as a feature.
Eventually, I decided to try a brown version of my Churning Stars quilts. Ohio Star blocks are classic, and I liked the overall look. It would also allow me to use a few shades of brown, which worked best for the somewhat limited browns in my Island Batik stash. I made my blocks. Had all the blocks made. Went to lay it out. "Hmmmm...this feels a lot bigger than the other one." I did not check my original EQ8 design. I assumed I had made the original with 12" blocks. I had not; that quilt had 9" blocks. This meant the brown version would be 72" square. There is some variation in the size of the teacher quilts, but I aim for about 60" square. At first I was just going to go forward, but in the end, I decided the quilt would just be too big, so instead of the 5 x 5 layout I intended, this one is 4x4, so the pattern isn't quite as nice as I'd like, but it still looks ok. And I now have enough extra blocks to make a 3x3 quilt that will become a donation quilt whenever I get it put together.
All fabrics are Island Batik. The background is Bone, the unadorned stars are Copper, and there are several fabrics in the alternate star block. All was cut with the Accuquilt. I'm glad to have it done, and truth be told, I hope none of next year's teachers name brown as their favorite color!