In the dark of the night

Why is it I always get inspired in the middle of sleeping?  Last night after finishing up some quilting and doing some necessary sewing (woot for fat quarter bag holders - I'll post a picture in a bit) I got to thinking about my Hunger Games quilt.  With my PoD2015 caught up I think I may return to working on the HG quilt.

I typically layout my quilts just using an excel spreadsheet (because I"m not very fancy).

Originally I had thought to mimic the icons from the movie with laurel leaves surrounding the square and the word district and the district number rounding it out - even going so far to actually piece (thanks to liljabs) one of the district words and then the sheer volume of work shimmered in front of my eyes and I began rethinking things.  This quilt is pretty big and adding all the extras really would make it insanely bigger.  You can see my sad little sketch here...

SO here's my midnight inspiration

I have just over half of the squares made, and I think I am going to solicit one of my friends with an embroidery machine to do the words - and I'll hand embroider the arrows - simple yet beautiful.  (Don't laugh at my drawings).  I love the visual impact of the colors against the black and don't want anything to really take away from that.  

I've also been on the prowl for a backing material - and here's a few I've been considering:

I love the arrow theme - and a part of me wants to just do a turned edge to the front to finish rather than a whole separate binding - but I'm not sure yet.  Right now I'm leaning to the red or every which way multi-color arrows.  We'll see.

HG - Pattern Testing District 5

So I am playing a bit with a new HG square for this quilt.  I'm still in the dark as far as how I'm putting this whole thing together, but I have a few ideas.

This pattern was put together with a red alphabet set, and a green alphabet set - Gotta love that liljabs LOVES all those little pieces!  Slow and steady!

Putting all those little bits together really took some time.  I feel like on squares like this it's important to remove paper as you go, and trim seams down to 1/8th an inch to avoid bulky seams.  I read somewhere that you can "hammer" those bulky spots too to help reduce, but I'm too chicken to do it.

Just a little more.....

and finally - whala!  I've got to work on my own lining up skills (thinking that switching to clips over quilt pins may help).  It's not perfect, but I'm happy enough with it.