Design Challenge; Week #5 Results

This week's challenge was to design a quilt that illustrates company coming to visit, in honor of an upcoming visit from a friend whom I don't get to see very often.

I skipped the sketch book this week, and went straight to Word to "sketch."  Several ideas emerged, and some are more promising than others, as always.  More might come to mind in the future, but here's what has come forth so far.

The first is more a statement about my housekeeping skills that about the company, but it is honest that my house tends be a bit...shall we say, not quite kempt, unless company is coming, at which point I straighten things up and make them more orderly.  Not perfectly orderly, because I couldn't be a perfect, or even really good, housekeeper no matter how hard I try.  Then, when the company leaves, the house adjusts to its normal state of pleasant disarray.

That is kind of fun and might make a quilt that is not half bad, at least in its meaning to me.  The next idea has the company coming into the house, mingling and conversing, then leaving again at the end of the stay.   They are each a little different, some know each other and others do not.  .  It is more of a party sort of atmosphere and the design is appropriately busy.  In fact, it may be a bit chaotic.  :-)

So, more in the spirit of one friend coming to visit for a few days, the design is modified.  The spiral in the house represents the fun and joy of friends visiting and talking.   I like this one very much, though I think I might make some changes in color scheme.

I gave some thought to using flowers to represent the flowering of friendship, using petals joining in the home to flower.

I didn't like that very much and switched to my every-favorite circles to represent the friends as they come into flower.  I like this better but I think if I were to make a quilt it would be more traditional, with a pieced pattern of solid or prints that read solid, on either side of the "house," which would be a large floral fabric that included all the colors of the solid pieces. 

I know which is my favorite; which one do you like best?  How might you change any of the designs?

One more week of the challenge, I think, and then I'll take a survey to see which of the six you think I should work on first, to make an actual quilt.  (The challenge will probably continue but I'd like to make a start on some of these designs this summer.)