New start

It's funny how other ideas filter in once the troublesome parts of a current project are resolved. I finished all the feathers and added some cross-hatching to the dark borders around the appliqued blocks in Hubris. Currently it's wadded up and stored on the table of my Viking mid-arm, ready to be finished up with a cone of King Tut "Sphinx" thread over all the neutral fabrics. Haven't decided on a design yet, but after all the feathers, anything is doable!

Yup, my studio is as crowded as it appears. The Guest Room used to hold a goodly portion of all this, but it's actually being used by a guest (our youngest son) at the moment!

The picture above might give a good idea as to why I double-, triple-, and quadruple-check the room before closing the door for the night, yet still end up hearing Wraith mewing pathetically from inside the room the next morning. If he isn't nestled on top of an isochromatic project, he'll have crawled under it instead.

But this is a post about new starts.

The other night I went to bed with a vague notion of wanting to use up my rolls of 2.5" and 3.5" scraps, in something of a jelly roll race idea, but with the rows separated by strips of a neutral fabric. I have a large 2.5" roll of scrappy colors, a smaller 3.5" roll, and roughly 50" of B&W fabrics in another 2.5" strip.

Rolls in progress last year.

I'd been imagining using 86.5" lengths of these scrappy rolls (the longest length I could get from the 100% cotton sheeting I was trying to use up)...

...for an entire quilt top, but overnight another idea had come to me. Over coffee and (literally over) a lap-napping kitty, I sketched it out and set to work using my elementary-school math skills until I finally got a plan I liked.

There was some extending needed on the B&W roll to get two 30.5" strips, but there was plenty of the 3.5" roll to supply ten 30.5" strips. I discovered some bleached muslin in my B&W drawer of yardage, so that's what I used to create this middle section of a someday quilt.

At this writing, all the strips have been sewn together according to plan and the whole thing is waiting to be ironed. Once that's done, a 3.5"x86.5" length of the sheeting will be sewn to the top and bottom. From there, I'm not sure if I'll want to keep going as far as the sheeting will take me (I know there's plenty of the 2.5" scrappy roll to play with!), or fill the top and bottom 36"x86" sections with blocks from various Leader-Ender projects that have been collecting over the years. Or perhaps, a combination of both ideas?

More about my brother's quilt: he texted that his quilt arrived safely and he'll make sure to send a picture once it's displayed. Here's my mother and me holding it up the day before I mailed it off.

I try to remember to wear my chorus name tag every time I visit, so she doesn't have to guess who I am.

We had spent quite a bit of time going over all the details, as well as the plans she had drawn up and sketched out (I included those in the package). As I expected, she didn't remember any of it, but was impressed with the artistry of the finished project, as was everyone who happened by that afternoon.

There was one disappointment with this project--the label. Even after ironing it over and over again, it still bled in the wash!