Its super, Feline fanatic! I like the extreme random-ness. Its one you could scan during a tv commercial and see something new every time! My favorites (like the Splendid Sampler I'm doing now) use all different techniques and I see that in yours, too!

I love samplers! You can vary the settings - they don't all have to be sashed (as you can see from the beautiful batik example). I have set them medallion-style, on point, with plain fabric between, etc. I also used "gradations" batik in various colors to put blocks of many colors together rainbow fashion. I like samplers, too, for practicing my machine quilting. They allow me to vary what I do in each block.

I do that with red, white, and blue. Doesn't take long to get a lap size done.

Feline Fanatic - what a great job you did putting that quilt together. I think the common factor in the quilt is that it is made of all cool colors, that all of your colors have blue in them.

I did a BOM last year and one of the blocks just didn't fit together from my perspective. So I changed it to a block I like. Now I have 12 blocks ready to put into a quilt. I like getting the projects in small amounts. It makes a project seem doable.

I can see why this is your favorite quilt! It is lovely and is one I would never get tired of looking at!

I made a sampler top two or three years ago -- still not quilted -- for the very reasons you mention; I wanted to try my hand at different blocks. The "commonality" is that each block is red and white but of different fabrics.

A friend suggested doing this with Christmas fabrics. The fabrics don't all have to match but they usually all coordinate enough to keep that Christmasy feeling in the finished quilt.

PAL, I guess that is the unifying factor in the quilt. It does have mostly cool color spectrum, except for the smattering of hot pinks and browns. I know I tried to pull colors from my stash that played nicely with the colors I got in the block swap. There was a lot of green and aqua and teal but also purple. It was a fun quilt to make, from participating in a swap (my first) to coming up with a way to get a quilt out of all those wonderful blocks from other members of this board.

I will be making other samplers, Good Lord willing. FWS is on my bucket list. I was gifted a bunch of CW repros that I plan to make it with. I also have fabrics set aside for a new sampler for my guest bedroom that will be more traditional with the same fabrics throughout and all the same size blocks set with sashing.

wow!!! very pretty!!!