Design Wall Monday - 3/21/16

Ohhhh it was such a good weekend - blue skies, sunshine, good food and lotsa time in my quilt lab!!!! I actually sat on the living room floor on Saturday just so I could sit in the sun.

My first chore for the weekend was packing my little blue suitcase with hexie projects for an upcoming trip. Yeah, it's early to pack but I see it as setting my honey-do or priority list until repacking for the next trip in mid-April. Any way...the suitcase worked cuz I was pretty productive.

Second chore was cleaning up a bookcase - tune in tomorrow for those pictures.

Having done my "chores", it was time to play so I alternated back and forth between hexies and machine work.

I like the sparkle the teal flange adds

One of my easiest finishes was the binding on this doll quilt. It was already sewn onto the front of the quilt, I just had to machine sew it to the back with my flat fell foot. Easy peasy.

I think the Quality Control Officer was pleased.

Not the world's best photo but I really liked the texture as I was turning off the room lights.

I also worked on a section of the quilting on this (unnamed) doll quilt. I had quilted orange peels in the hexie off-center strip but wasn't sure about the other strips. After some encouragement from Janet I went ahead with my idea for a grid (matching the hexie edges/angles) on the larger strip. The remaining smaller strip (at bottom of photo) will have feathers.

I'm not the only one taking advantage of the table!

I also got a real good start on name badge holders for my upcoming conference. I took advantage of the 8 foot table still up from the party last week and spread out each "kit" so I work on it assembly style.

The colored squares were purchased at a quilt show. The vendor sold hand dyes and had a cute little box of 6 gradients of each of her colors. They were 2" squares and perfect for 3/4" hexies. Unfortunately, the burnt orange set to the left is short one piece - I am hoping to find a suitable replacement so I can include that rosette too.

On Saturday afternoon I peaked into my little blue suitcase for a project to work on while I watched one episode of Grey's Anatomy. I decided to work on the ombre rosettes since I thought it would be easy to finish one rosette.

Of course, as the weekend progressed, I kept going back to the ombre project.
After all, there were only 6 rosettes left to finish...

You know that I finished all the rosettes by last night, right? There is one more at work that I will take home to finish tonight and then I'll find a piece to sub in the burnt orange gradient. I think that will make 21 rosettes.

Am I crazy enough to cut fabric for the diamonds before my trip?

I've even worked out a setting. I'll be using these 3/4" diamonds. Please know that *IF* I ever post a picture of myself I will be bald from making tiny diamonds...

And after the rosettes were done? I pulled out my card trick blocks and got a good start on this too.

Yeah - I might have to repack the suitcase before my trip...and I'm ok with that...

Discombobulated

As happens with everyone - everything is happening at once and I'm all discombobulated with what to work on next! There is no focus at my house....

---The last day to buy doe tags is tomorrow so my day job has been busy with hunters.
---September dog licenses are due today as well as all the people who are super late and got court tickets so my day job has been busy with dog owners.
---School taxes are due today so my 2nd job has been busy with an extra ~3 hours a day to keep up. Most people mail their taxes today, depending on the postmark to keep them "on time" so that big bundle will arrive on my desk Friday which could take 4 or 5 hours to process.
---Tonight I have to take down our hexie club quilt exhibit and tomorrow I need to make an apple crisp for the hexie club meeting on Friday - we are celebrating our third anniversary!!!!!!!!
---Saturday I'm working all day at the LQS for their 5 year anniversary party.

I don't mind each activity in itself but with all this in 6 days by the time I get home at night, I'm whooped and just need something simple to work on!

On Monday, I was trying to think about what I can finish before the 2 trunk shows (now just 8 and 20 days away). The doll quilt needs some sit down time at my Bernina so that is on schedule for Sunday. That brought me back to my plus quilt. I started pulling fabrics which created a mess while I decided on fabric combos.

That reminded me of a small project that was barely started but could make a good example for the second show. You can barely see the small plastic box on the near side of the mess...it's a stack of 2" squares of graduated hand dyes bought at a quilt show a year or so ago. Each graduation has 6 shades and there were no color repeats in the box. It's perfect for 3/4" rosettes! I had made the yellow one eons ago but decided to pull this out to work on piecemeal when I have short threads from other projects in the next few weeks. Well, that was the plan cuz here it is Wednesday morning and I have 2 done already.

Last night I cut out 4 sets of plus block and got the olive green set made...7 more to go...

This morning I pulled out my very first hexie project. I SWEAR it's the perfect doll quilt size by chance!!! It's still just a top because I had this grand idea of a fake trapunto effect under the center of each black eyed susan but ran out of ideas after just 4 of them. In the end it isn't a very exciting effect.

Today I'm going to decide if I should:  --come up with 8 more designs, --rip out the 4 designs and just leave them blank or --pick my fav design, rip out the other 3 and do them all the same. I'll add this project to Sunday's Bernina time.

I still need to stitch the facing on a topper and work on filling in the triangle edges for Value Proposition...any body know where I can purchase about 10 extra hours a day?