Does a sewing machine qualify as heavy machinery?

At our last St. Louis Modern Quilt Guild meeting,we were given six fat eights of Jay McCarroll's Habitat line and challenged to make a quilt using those fat eights and any solids we wanted. I sat looking at that pile of fabric for a long time before deciding to just cut it into strips of varying widths -- I wanted to minimize some of the boldness of the patterns. I then picked six solids from my stash and cut those into strips of varying widths.

If you are familiar with Ashley's string quilt tutorial or my Urban Lattice quilt tutorial, this next part will be very familiar. I essentially took a 12 inch piece of scrapbook paper and drew a line down the middle. I stitched a big piece of Kona white on one side and then stitched my strings of fabric on the other side - mixing up solids and patterns. Trimmed down, you end up with 12.5" unfinished blocks (12" when sewn).

 

From my fabric strips of solids and prints, I was able to make 14 blocks. I probably could have squeezed out 15, but I was going for an even number. 

Then -- and I don't recommend this part -- I went and had a skin graft done in my mouth which resulted in a nice prescription of Vicodin.  Ka-POW!  That stuff really gets the creative juices flowing. Last night I woke up at 3 a.m. and sketched out a bunch of quilt ideas. 

I also came up with three new quilt patterns for my Habitat quilt that each use 14 of these semi-string blocks:  Modern God's Eye, The Big Zig, and Modern Tracks.  

These quilt patterns obviously rely on lots of white space. Modern God's Eye and The Big Zig are both  72" x 84" finished. Modern Tracks is 60" x 72" finished. Obviously, these would be really easy to size down if you wanted. It might be the Vicodin talking, but I think these patterns are pretty simple to figure out if you have my description on how to make one block and then the picture of the finished quilt? If not, I can do a more detailed tutorial in a few weeks when I'm feeling better.

In the meantime, I need your help deciding which of these patterns to use for my Habitat challenge quilt. Will you help me decide? Check out the poll on the right sidebar.Oh, and consider joining my new flickr group where you can post pictures of the things you've made based on my patterns and tutorials!

Now if you'll excuse me, I have some resting to do. May even more inspiration strike tonight!!