More Batik Scrap Weaving Adventures, and Mazel Tov, Cumberbatches

In our last post, we wove batik scrap strips into a fun and fast quilt, with the help of a hokey Star Trek movie (redundant) starring Benedict Cumberbatch, or BC as we call him to save bytes. Yesterday, on Valentine's Day, my Facebook feed informed me that BC wed, so we send him and Mrs. C congratulations, if not the actual quilt.

Like BC, weaving is highly addictive, and I had more batik strips in my scrap pile, so I started another one. Using the approach in the last post, I wove and lightly glued the strips at intersections, then carefully laid them on a bunch of different backgrounds. Here are a few of the contenders:

Batik grapes:

Meh.
Blackish green:

Horrible. 

Rainbow verticle stripes with a gold overlay: 

Nothing special

Same fabric, with stripes set horizontally: 

Hmmmm. 

 Chopped lettuce batik:

Vegetative.  

Magenta: 

Ouch, my eyes! 

A narrow strip for a non-traditional background:

Too daring. 

 Orange:

Too awful. 

Sunset stripes:

Too wonderful.  I liked the last one best, but I wasn't willing to waste such a fantastic piece of fabric on this scrap project. Instead, it will continue to live unused in my scrap box for another generation before my children sell it for a pittance at a garage sale.

So instead, here's my final version.

It's the rainbow stripe, set horizontally, but I used the back instead of the gold-overlay front.   I like the fact that the woven area looks like a bridge between the blue areas. I quilted wavy lines on the blue area, triangular-crystalline structures on the other colors.

After the quilt was batted and backed, I stitched all the central area strips with an open zig-zag, matching thread color more or less to each strip.

I like this MUCH better than satin stitching in the last quilt. 

Now, in theory, it's done. But it doesn't feel done. Just fooling around, I placed two magenta stripes on either side of the woven island. I am finding myself unexpectedly liking them!  

Why do I like this? What do you think? Should I sew them down? I'd love your vote on this!