How-To: Improv Wonky Stars Layout

In my retreat recap post the other day I included a picture showing my finished wonky star quilt tops, the blocks for which were made by the "Oh Beehave" participants. Today I thought I would post some more information about how I pieced the tops. I would describe the way I pieced the tops as an "improv" method - especially since I made it up as I went along. I took a few pictures though, so I can explain some of my process.

First off I chose the layout of my stars. The design wall at craft retreat was incredibly handy for this, although a floor would have worked too. I marked the size I wanted the quilt to be with thread on the wall and then I chose the layout of both tops at the same time, so here you can see both sets of stars on the design wall at the same time:

I will now outline how I went about making the quilt top with red stars and a beige background.

First I looked at my layout and mentally split up the top into sections (photos of the finished top as they're a bit clearer). First two (the horizontal line in the below pictures), then three (the vertical line):

Next I split those three sections into smaller sections - to avoid y-seams my lines had to both start and finish either at the edge of the quilt top or a previously decided line:

I then carried on mentally splitting up my quilt top until I could see square or rectangular shapes filling in all the gaps between the stars:

Then I started sewing pieces of beige background fabric to the stars to fill in the negative space. Here you can see where I have pieced together the top into 7 large pieces:

Does that all make sense? Taking away all the lines can you see how I broke up the quilt top?

How about the top with the red background?

Here's how I broke it up:

Does that description make sense? It was actually very fun and freeing to do, especially since I was trying to use up the left over pieces of fabric sent back to me by the ladies in the Bee.

Tonight at the MMQG SASE I'm going to get some batting so I can start quilting this sucker!