WIP Wed: Lavender Challenge

With only a few days left of school, I decided to start one more quilt before my "design wall", which is also our living room floor, becomes too difficult to keep free and clean.

I visited a quilt store in a neighboring town recently and a quilt challenge caught my eye.  Actually, the fabric that is supposed to be the focus fabric caught my eye.  I love purple, I love lavender, I love this fabric!

Oregon holds a state-wide Lavender Festival every July, with events at dozens of lavender farms spread throughout Oregon, including Purple Ridge Lavender Farm in nearby Hermiston, Oregon.  Our local farm joined up with Aunty Ida's Quilt Shop to hold a quilt challenge, to create a quilt of any size using a yard of this fabric.

I've never done a quilt challenge using a focus fabric, so I thought that this would be fun to try, but I passed up all of the very tempting coordinating fabric the store had on display, and used scrap and stash fabric instead.

I've also been wanting to try out a "Bento Block" Quilt for a few years now, and thought using some of my stash Asian fabric would be a fun twist.  I sewed up some boxes first.

Then I cut them up and started rearranging them.

My final decision was to stick with the "traditional" squares put back together.  Now I'm just working on how to arrange these blocks within the quilt.

This certainly has been a challenge for me!!  Wish me luck getting it finished in time for the festival!

As usual, I'm linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced WIP Wed.  Come see what others are working on!!