Blooming Nine Patch Quilt - Bright Color Palette

A few photos of a nearly completed quilt.  The amazing quilting on this was done by Rachael, blogged about by her over here at Rachael Rabbit (photos were also taken by Rachael, very full service operation and much lovelier lighting than I get in my small apartment).  I think she did a gorgeous job of honoring the patchwork and my vision while taking the entire project up about 20 notches, adding a great deal of beauty that I never would have imagined, which I think is what every quilter hopes when the "send their quilt out" for quilting.  

I always show my family pictures of my quilts.  They were super impressed with this one due to Rachael's quilting, convinced that this must be the work of a super powered quilting computer.  My quilting consists of straight lines and some string tying.  I did once machine quilt a baby quilt with a sort of circular bubble pattern.  I was quite proud of myself until I realized that the quilt was incredibly hard due to the density of my quilting.

Here's the photo of my original inspiration for this color scheme - a lovely dress from Saks.  I didn't find many chartreuse fabrics in the shop that day so veered a bit more towards the pinks.  I'm still working a bit on nailing proportion of color in my quilts.  I find this blooming nine (or in this case four patch) pattern a bit deceptive in that each successive ring plays a greater roll / takes up more space with a bit of a snowball effect towards the end.  I generally start with my favorite color in the center, but am going to rethink that next time and use the outer rings for my dominate color, aka deep purple in this case.  Sometimes with other quilts, I will have a color palette and know what proportions of color I would like, but it can take a bit of time to ferret out a suitable quilt pattern or block. At times, I'm also interested in only having certain colors next to each other, adding another layer of challenge.