More designing, a little sewing.................

Center #4 seemed to be the favorite in yesterday's comments.  I haven't made a final decision but I think it will be the one.

I took this photo as a reference because I need to start sewing blocks.  I have to move 2 sets of 8" blocks to the left on the design wall so I can get the rest of the layout up there.

I have sewn all of the blocks in the first 2 columns and the top 2 blocks in the 3rd column.  Today I'll start moving pieces to the left.  I cut lots of light squares and triangles yesterday but am still short of the number of squares that I need, both red and light value.

It got up to 59 degrees yesterday and there was sunshine part of the day.  I filled the bird feeders and dug out some Burdock.  I cut down a Tree of Heaven that comes back every year even though I have tried to kill it.

Continuing from yesterday.............................

At the left is the photo I showed yesterday of the beginning of a layout, inspired by a Mary Ellen Hopkins layout (also shown yesterday).  On the right is my box of 4" components, cut over a period of a few years.  I did some more trial layout choices to see if scrappy was going to work.

I don't have a lot of light fabrics already cut but there were enough to get a feel for how this is working.  I tried 4 different centers and this was the first one.

Here is number 2 center trial.  This is one of the centers in the quilt from the book that I showed yesterday.

Since I had some 4 patches sewn in the components box, I had to try them for trial #3.

Then as I sat there knitting and staring at the design wall I tried center #4.  Now that I have decided scrappy is going to work, I can start sewing the 2 side triangles to the elongated hexagon shapes.  I will do some more cutting of squares before I start sewing the eight inch 4 patch units.

This is the dishcloth I finished knitting last night.

Yesterday was grocery shopping day.  Our normal high right now 72 degrees and it was 52 degrees yesterday.  We only got .6" of rain over a period of 24 hours.  I was hoping we would get over an inch.  I have my rain gauge near my front porch so I think I'll move it a little farther away to be sure I'm getting a correct reading.

Quilt top......and other things...........

The top is sewn together but I haven't decided whether I'll add a narrow border of the same fabric as the quarter square triangles.  I staystitched the  edge so it's ready for border or not.  It is 64" x 80".  It is made of Martha Negley fabrics.  She is mentioned in at least one of Kaffe's early books.  Most of these fabrics are from her earlier lines.

Later in the day I did some more cutting with my new 8" die.

Here are the rest.  There are 2 of some of them.  Then it was time to explore some ideas for them.

I decided to check out some of the layouts in this Mary Ellen Hopkins book.

This is the drawiing I liked the best.  It would make a 64" wide quilt.  I would add on top and/or bottom rows to make it rectangular.

Here are some ideas of coloration for the pieces.  The 4 patches are colored in 2 different ways in this quilt.  I can see it is going to take a lot of thinking and searching for fabrics so this will become a long term project.

I put some pieces up on the design wall to see what the spacing looks like.  I need to make fabric decisions for the triangles to finish these blocks as well as the fabrics for the 4 patches.

 

Layout complete......................

All of the blocks were finished in time to do a layout on this Martha Negley fabric quilt.  I didn't get it sewn together yet.  There are only 7 fabrics used in this quilt, not my usual 50-100 different fabrics.

I spent most of the evening cutting squares and triangles out of scraps created in the last month.

Here is my photo matching the quilt I'm working on.  I wanted to get out to the back garden and take a photo of the pink Columbine for several days, but it has been so windy.  Finally yesterday afternoon I got out there.  There are 3 different kinds of Hostas near this plant.

I tried for a nice close up of the blooms to show the yellow centers.  Yesterday was probably the last day to get a good look at these with rain predicted for today.

 

A few complete blocks.............

The first task yesterday was pairing the final round of triangles with the square in a square blocks so I can make them into Economy blocks.

There are 5 total combinations of fabrics.  The quarter square triangle fabric is the same in every block.

This is one of each of the combinations after sewing but before pressing.  I actually sewed 2 of each last night.

The blocks are 16" so this gives a better perspective of their size.  The quilt will have 20 blocks.

I tried one more time for a close up shot of the Yellow Salsify and had a bonus bee in the photo.  I did some more reading about the plant and found that it is invasive in the US and will choke out other plants.  I'm going to dig it out and toss it before the blooms turn to seed like a dandelion.  Since it just appeared and I didn't pay for it, I don't feel bad tossing it.  The info I found said the taproot is deep (like a dandelion) so I'm going to dig down and hope to get all of it.

I had lunch with my son and my 3 great-grandchildren from the far side of a neighboring state.  On the way home we stopped and visited with my sister-in-law, nephew, and brother-in-law.  Then the kids came back to my house and I let each of them chose a quilt.  I had some other things that I let them choose from, art supplies, etc.  They were happy campers when they left.  They will head for home today. 

2 years...............................

About 2 years ago I pulled some Martha Negley fabrics for a quilt and I even pressed the fabrics to prepare for cutting.  I went as far as pulling one of the 3 dies to do the cutting and all of that was laying on a table for 2 years...yes, 2 years waiting for me to start it.  I kept having second thoughts about my original idea.  Yesterday I just went with the first idea and in one hour had all of the pieces cut for 20 blocks.

On the right is a few of the centers of the blocks that I sewed last night. The photo above is the last round of triangles, which are laid out here for the visual on the left.

There are 5 center fabrics and 5 corner fabrics, with only 4 of them being alike.  I will need to make a decision which corners will go with which center blocks.  Meanwhile I will finish sewing the center sections and press them.  These blocks are 16" so these are all 8" components, 8" squares, 8" quarter square triangles, and 8" half square triangles.

It was too windy yesterday to take many photos but I did get one of the little Columbine plant in the corner of the sidewalk and driveway.

 

Searching the stash.....................

Yesterday I was searching for Philip Jacobs fabrics for the triangles I need for my current project.  Here are four that I'm pretty sure will work but I think I want to find at least four more that will work too.

While I was in the basement I finished pressing all of the small floral triangle squares.  I had a pile of larger squares too that were added to the same storage box.  I also pressed a pile of fabrics that are waiting to be cut.

I pulled out three books to look through after seeing them on Maureen's blog.  It's fun to analyze the quilts.

I found one quilt in the book that I made many years ago.  I never took a full photo of my quilt.  I think that was back before I had my first digital camera.  This book was published in 2002 and I wasn't taking pictures of my large quilts at that time.  There are many quilts that never got photographed.

This is the only photo I have of it and the heart quilt is covering up a large portion of it.  I gifted it to a family member.  It was so large I don't know where I could have photographed it anyway.