WIP Wednesday - magpie tendencies

Last week I was teaching my 1st year undergraduate students about learning styles and preferences and it occurred to me that quilting is teaching me a lot about my own style of learning.  In fact this "light bulb" moment happened during the class and slightly threw us all off of our stride (thought it best not to explain my sudden glaikit* look by talking quilting - they thought it was my cold!). 

I'm most comfortable with a pattern or a recipe or a proven way of doing something and can even wing it a little as long as I have this rock to stand on.  So my quilting and sewing tends to replicate other people's work or patterns - I see something inspirational but don't always feel comfortable giving it my own spin.  My Brit Swap quilt was kind of like that - AMH feathers being the inspiration - and I fretted for ages cos I couldn't find a pattern for them (bad googling skills as it turns out).  SO I had to work it out myself, which was a painful process but I felt really good after I did.

So to the Modern She Made swap that I'm working on at the mo.  It has to include triangles and my partner is keen on a pillow cover.  I was inspired by this quilt by Faith from Fresh Lemons

She mentioned that she paper pieced the blocks and had written a pattern for Spring Quilt Market as it was shown there but was waiting for it to be released.  So I decided to have a go at working out how to make the block myself.  Thank goodness for EQ - what a help.  But because I can't get my head round paper piecing yet (mainly due to the amount of snot in my head at the moment - TMI?), I decided to cut and sew. 

My partner is really keen on Essex linen (flax) so I bought some of that and quickly realised that spray starch was going to be my best friend!  So here's where I'm at...

first lay out - matchy matchy with inspiration quilt

second layout - a bit tweeked

third option - a slightly different approach?

For option #3 I would add a square in the middle and pieces of Essex Linen to fill in the gaps.  Which would you choose?

I've never made a pillow cover before so this is well out of my comfort zone and I like it!

Linking with WIP Wednesdays over at Lees @ Freshly Pieced

*glaikit - a fine scottish word for stupid/vacant