Finished(-ish) Celtic Solstice

My Celtic Solstice is finally assembled, for the most part. I am very happy!

I think it came out with a very "Spring" feeling to it. Unfortunately the chevrons did me in as far as accuracy goes. Pretty much none of them matched up with those yellow triangles, so the diamond illusion is somewhat lost. Otherwise I think my seams did okay. I learned with this quilt to square up at every step, even though it takes FOREVER, because it made a huge difference in the accuracy of the final product.

Here are all the blocks laid out for assembly.

 I was able to keep track of my place with pins. I would place a pin in the right hand corner of every other block in a row, one pin in the first, two in the second, and so on, to keep track of the order of pieces in the row.  Once a row was assembled, I would stick a pin in the left most block designating the number of that row. Yes, it meant that some rows had 5-6 pins stuck in them, but it worked and it was easy to implement.

This was my first "scrappy" quilt, and I bought most of the fabrics for it so it doesn't completely count.  Here are my personal takes on scrappy:

• The more uniform your fabrics are within a color group, the more clear the final design will be. My blues were all very similar and I think it helped them pop. The yellow/orange had a lot of variety which I think hurt it. And the white would have stood out much better if I hadn't used those slightly tan pieces.
• Make sure the colors not only all get along well together, but have sufficient contrast. My light green and yellow/orange were just too close together in intensity, and honestly too close to the white as well, leading them to really fade in the final quilt.
• Don't mix your colors up! If I hadn't accidentally switched pink and yellow in the first step, the quilt would have looked very different, and I think potentially would have looked better. Right now the pink jumps out in those diamond blocks, but if yellow had been there instead, as in Bonnie's, the diamond would have stood out much better. The four patches between blocks would have stood out better as well because there is more contrast between the pink and green than the yellow and green.

I had fun on this quilt and I am looking forward to finishing it sometime this year. I have already bought fabric for the borders and backing. I will definitely be participating in more of Bonnie's mysteries in the future!

See everyone else's finished quilts at the link up!