"Soul Searching"

A few days ago I finished hand-sewing on the binding for "Soul Searching," a pattern by Kathy Doughty.  The quilt was pictured like this in the book, with the colored patches reminding me of Christmas ornaments or Japanese lanterns.  Each color block uses 2 1/2 inch strips in various lengths from 24 different fabrics, almost entirely from my stash.  I repeated strips from the neutrals.  The binding is a black and white stripe.  I quilted in (fairly) straight lines about 2 1/2 inches apart crossing the colored strips perpendicularly, as you can perhaps see in the small picture.

But I saw another quilter's version where she had turned the quilt sideways and added another row of neutrals on two sides to make the quilt bigger and to put the colors away from the edge, and that's what I did.  It is 75 1/2 inches by 82 3/4 inches before washing and drying.

I find it a striking quilt!