Finishing and Pondering

First, the finish:

70" x 91"

and its back:

The large quadrants were part of an impulse buy of a bundle of "1-yard" cuts of batik fabrics (which fell far short of a yard, causing problems in a previous project). The center square was a scrap, and the "arms", I believe, were long strips gleaned/culled from the Community First! Quilters' legacy stash.

A closer look at some of those pieces:

The binding was another piece from my stash which seemed innocuous enough to do its job without calling attention to itself.

The top was from the SRT (Size Reduction Therapy) box I brought home a year and a half ago. It's the third to be completed, leaving just one more! I finished rearranging everything at our annual retreat, under the watchful eyes of all the other retreat-goers, and will be so happy to hand this over at our next meeting.

The outer borders being created from deconstructed original sections, and scraps from my stash.

I quilted the top using the King Tut "Date Palm" on top (it blended beautifully, as hoped) and an olive AURIfil in the bobbin . . .

. . . using this urban elementz Open Fan pattern:

This has actually been finished for several days but the weather has been so wet, and it wasn't until today that I was able to corner Thing 2 and have him hold it up for its photo op. In the meantime, I've been completing other sewing projects (one of which was to lengthen Thing 2's gi pants by roughly 6", so he was more than happy to let me use that length of his to hold up this quilt!)

I'd mentioned another group quilt in my last post: this is the pattern and complete kit that had been donated to our group.

The coördinator who took on the job of breaking this down to manageable, assignable sections brought everything to our last meeting, which was poorly attended, so I ended up taking home two project bags--the four "Cups and Saucer" blocks, and the thirty-six outer border blocks. I wish I knew at the time how much I'd come to detest Flying Geese (in the C&S blocks).

I know--the alignment of the border blocks looks all wrong, but I sewed them up correctly in the end!

This was a WIP photo I took to send to the coördinator, so the C&P block is just segments thrown up on the design wall to see how it was all going to look. The finished product has pointy points, trust me.

Her goal is to have everything turned back in by the end of this month. I'll be giving her four Cups & Saucer blocks and four outer borders tomorrow. She's promised me coffee in return. Win!

With that done by 2pm, I had the whole afternoon to fill. 

It wasn't hard.

An anonymous bag came home with me from the last CF!Q meeting, in which were several yardage pieces and a kit (those to be ebayed), a large fabric piece that'll make a nice neutral background for a brown project or two I have in mind, and an orphan top:

At the moment, roughly 43" x 53"

She's really quite beautiful. I wish I could say that it's my camera angle that makes the inner top edge look wider than the inner bottom edge, but it isn't. The measurement (inside the green border) at the top is a full inch longer than at the bottom (I suspect a mis-cut border that went undetected), and from there things escalated. At this stage, the outer off-white borders have a ruffle that would thrill any little girl to wear on her dress.

There will be frogging, all the way back to the original center. This is too nice a piece to let go without making it the best it can be. It's not like I don't have experience! And speaking of being its best, this too shall be fixed:

True to form, until I posted this picture I thought it was the right 2 segments that needed flipping. I'm glad I waited until I put this picture up!

A closer look at some of the fabrics, all of which seem to be oriental-themed with gold highlights:

But that's a back-burner project for now, along with another I've been pondering for some months. I suspect the CF!Q legacy stash was sometimes used as a dumping place for pieces that simply didn't sell at the various places we stored our containers, as there were several du-/tri-/multi-plicates of Advent Calendars and other Holiday panels stuffed into the bins.

I've been cutting these down into small-enough pieces that their origins can be disguised, sewing them into my scrappy projects, but this panel (and its three identical triplets) caught my eye:

I quickly drew up a plan and attached it to the panels.

It's been niggling away in the back of my mind for months, possibly for over a year, and every time I add another piece to my overflowing 1.5", 2", 2.5", and 3.5" containers I wonder if it's time yet to start making those X-patches (4- ? 9- ?) that I've been pondering for this project. Or maybe I'll fill some of those X sections with a rendering of this star from the panel?

Beyond merely pondering, however, I took the next step in another project that's been limping along in the background. I dumped out all the 3-segment triangle squares I'd made for the Lady of the Lake blocks, ironed them and started sewing them to the original triangle squares adopted by me back in November 2022. My Leader-Ender for that has been to continue with the Snail's Trail blocks, started in April and progressing in fits and starts. And waiting in the background are these 2.5" batik strips--using up all the non-pink scraps I've been collecting for far too long--that'll eventually be sewn into a long jellyroll which will be manipulated into becoming a Contessa quilt top by the end of their journey.

CAT scanned. All is okay. Behind all the strips is my favorite winter jacket that needs some repairs. It may well be older than at least one of my kids!

This seems chaotic, and yet I feel as though quite a bit of forward progress has been made. I'm not just spinning my wheels, and seeing that Pile O' Projects (at the left in the picture above) dwindle is quite satisfying.