Sketching and quilting

Happy Sunday night, I think. A little guy is sick, but despite that and cleaning up after the other one's constant messes, I managed to get a few things done.

First, I decided to sketch some ideas for the Starburst quilting, after watching and sketching along with Angela Walters' Craftsy class "...Negative Space". I uploaded my quilt and sketches to the class questions and we'll see what my classmates and Angela think. What do you think?

Then between all the interruptions, and after bedtime routines, I was able to finish all the motifs I had planned and marked. It is called "Follow Your Dreams" by www.quiltingstencils.com . It's one of my favorites! It's continuous, curvy, covers a lot of space, is reminiscent of Arabic/Spanish art and architecture, and can be girly if you make the inside points meet and create flowers within flowers, like I did.

"Follow Your Dreams" is in the center star, the small corners around the center star, and all four corners. The big outer motifs are larger than 11" x 11" and when the arm of my machine is only 7" from needle to machine, it was hard controlling the smoothness and spacing of the lines and the bulk of the quilt itself.

Now I'm at a standstill because I haven't quite decided what to do with the rest. I don't really like all over quilting in one design to cover everything. I like emphasizing the block designs, and I like the quilting to make the design shine. This is a Starburst, so I want the quilting to be a pretty background, and help the burst points explode and expand outward. Hmmmm.
And yet there are such big, beautiful negative spaces in the quilt design, that are begging for something interesting to be quilted there. Swirls, meandering stars like the night sky, or simple wavy lines from the center out?

While I've been at this decision standstill, I was wishing today that I had more than one machine, or a mid-arm machine. Then I could leave my machine set up for quilting (tensions with threads, feet I'm using, etc), and do some regular block piecing on another machine while I'm thinking about design. It's not easy waiting for something you want and need when there's no plan available and no foreseeable timeframe to be able to get it. But I do try to teach myself and use what I've got to the best of my ability. And I guess I do pretty alright.