Turmoil with starbursts

Look what's happening to my red turmoil!  It has developed starbursts of pale striped piecing!

I wasn't exactly planning to do this, but it happened.  I had thought to lighten up the values a bit with pastels, and pretty soon I had a whole lot of piecing that reads as white/pale pink.  And then the bits of pale started being jagged triangles.

Right now I'm arranging them on the wall to make constellations or starbursts.  I don't know if they're going to stay in this configuration or if the pales are going to want to group themselves into a larger mass.  But I think I'm reaching the end of my mindless piecing -- the stage where I just make rectangles of strips upon strips.  Now I'm cutting and piecing the rectangles together into complicated expanses.  I think I'm only going to make new "fabric" as needed to make the whole thing go together.

The final putting-together process can be endlessly fiddly and take a whole lot longer than the early production phase, but it's also the most fun.  And I would say I'm at the beginning of the end for this composition.

Next week my husband is going to Florida for a week so I will be able to spend all my waking hours at the sewing machine.  I wonder how much I'll be able to finish before he comes home.