Happy Little Clouds

Quilting has begun. After pondering several designs that I could possibly accomplish without a stencil, I finally decided to just do wavy lines back and forth.

Dithering

Now that the blocks are getting assembled and some problematic "neutrals" are being called into play, I'm taking a close look at things before they go too far. This medium-orange-ish log had me on the fence--could I convince myself it was light enough to count as a neutral, or did it lean dark?

I built out the block on the design wall to see how it might play with subsequent rounds of logs.

I took pictures (obviously), squinted hard at it, considered creating a black & white version of this shot, then realized in the time it took me to do all that, I could have ripped out the 3-1/2" of stitching and replaced that log with something that didn't bother me at all!

So I did that instead. 1441 logs cut, and counting.

I'm wonkin', yes indeed...

Well, most of the project bags are done; they've all been machine sewn, and now there are only 4 left that need one lining seam hand-sewn together.

Most of them came out quite nicely, but one of the fabrics (used in 3 bags) did not stand up well to all the handling, crunching, and manipulating involved in getting these to the finished stage. I don't know if it was the iron-on stabilizer, or the fabric itself, or a combination of the two, but terrible wrinkles and puckering resulted.

I don't know if I'll offer these at half price, or rip them apart and use the zippers (and perhaps the handles) for another project. Since the chorus concert at which I'll be selling these has been moved up to June, I have several weeks to decide.

Wonkiness

Last summer I finally fell to the sirens' call of Wonky Stars. At least, I bought in to the idea of making them, and dug a bunch of neutral 2.5"x4.5" pieces from my Scrap User System's 2-1/2" box. To those I added all the small and dark triangles from my triangle box, and there they sat at the side of my sewing table, ignored, for several months.

As whims do.

The Shoo-Fly Leader-Ender project had stalled because I still needed to cut more pieces for the negative color blocks, so last month while assembling the QAYG behemoth and completing the first steps of fourteen Embryonic Pod Things, I started grabbing these for my leader-enders.

Simmering

And I ain't talkin' 'bout the heat!

I'm going to let these 2 layouts simmer on this virtual design wall for a while, until I decide which I prefer. I already know I'll be turning the upper right neutral square by 180 degrees, so there's less of a bridge between the star points.

Huh. I can already see that the X layout draws my eye toward the center, squinty-like, instead of the effect I was going for of sunlight radiating outward. It's counter-intuitive, but that's the effect best accomplished by the diamond placement!

Sunny

Nope, not another post about solar panels, but we love our system! Now that temps have settled into a steady stream of high 90s, our A/C is set to automatic (79 degrees) and the power graphs are looking significantly different than they did in Winter. I suspect our next bill will even have a digit to the left of the decimal point this month.

See? Not a post about solar panels.

Yellow confuses me. It seems too bright to be neutral, too light to be medium. So I usually set those scraps aside for another day.

That day finally came when I decided on the inset star design for a string quilt. I pulled some goldeny-orangies out of the 100% cotton string bin for variation, but these golds are mostly blends that have been sulking lurking about in the Not-100%-Cotton string bin. Four full-golden squares were needed, 4 neutral, and 8 half-each squares:

Sixteen more med/dark blocks were needed to bring this top to the size I wanted:

 

The only thing I made sure to do consistently was to lay a 2" strip of the shiny gold down the center of the 12 blocks that would have the yellows in them. From that point on, randomness reigned.

Looking forward to trimming and getting these up on the design wall!

Stringin' along

I cannot open my blog one more day to the sight of TFI. This has been sitting in Drafts; time to finish my thought and get it published!

I've been playing with more "neutrals", still getting comfortable with Bonnie Hunter's definition of the term. I also wanted to try a new-to-me technique of making string blocks: using a fabric foundation square instead of telephone book pages. The nice thing about string blocks for donation quilts: there's no wrong answer!

Lovely to meet you, Kay!

Thank you, Kae, for graciously allowing us to intrude upon your solitude this afternoon and giving me a tour of your studio and home and quilts. Such fun! Such loveliness!!

My verbal description of my design wall didn't even begin to convey what was in my mind's eye, and rather than try to match up a bunch of attached pictures to a narrative in an email, I figured this would be easiest.

My design wall, in a room with a 10' ceiling.