Harvest quilt

I know! It's the wrong time of year to be talking about harvest! But still, my quilt top is finished. It took a while longer than planned, what with life intervening and all, but it was simple enough to put together once I had decided on a layout. As you have seen from previous posts, it's made from three panels. I did wonder about quilting the panels separately before stitching them together, but decided against it - I just had to see what it would look like with the black border.

I really must see about improving my photography skills, though. I was about to blame the blurred look on lack of natural light again, but the rest of you seem to manage, so I'll just have to admit that it is the photographer who is at fault. I really haven't enogh space for photographing a quilt of this size indoors, but I will see about setting up some kind of arrangement with lights and background to take better close-upsat least. Maybe I need to read up on the subject too - any suggestions? I might start with the manual that came with the camera...

Anyway, I know I said earlier that there wouldn't be any turqoise in this one. Well... I can't resist it anyway. I have decided that I'll use it on the back. That way it won't interfere with the harvest colours, but you will catch glimpses of it when it is being used. At first I thought I would just stitch a few strips together - just to get a big enough piece, but then I thought that large squares in lots of different fabrics might be a better option. While my mind was playing with this idea, I remembered some sketches I did a while back of an all turqoise star quilt I would make in an attempt to reduce my stash of turqoise fabric. Then I thought: why not simplify that idea and use really large squares and just a few scattered stars here and there? Something like this:

I kind of like this idea - it won't take too long to stitch and I'll get to use two of my ideas in one quilt without having to quilt more than one. I'll have to mull it over some more.

The drawback is layering the two with lines matching, but with the help of a friend or two even that might be feasible. Hmmm, I think I'll go for it...