So Many Projects

 I've been in a flurry of getting things prepped and ready for 'the next phase' this past couple weeks. With the holidays right around the corner, I know the quilting side of things will slow down and then, if I'm not careful, all the momentum could be long gone.

All the prep work for another
Autumnal Tulips quilt

Right in the middle of all this busyness, there was an email asking me to consider doing a commission quilt. It was a very sweet request which made it hard to say no. After some serious deliberation and a little back and forth with the customer, we settled on a plan of attack. The timing isn't the greatest with everything else going on in our lives, but it's a good challenge! Thankfully I will only be doing the quilt top, so that feels helpful in limiting the overall amount of time involved in reaching a satisfactory conclusion.

Auditioning fabrics

One of the projects that has been nagging at me for a very long time, is the Improv. Hourglass Abstract quilt. I'm one of those people who have a LIST {or two} of open ended projects, which makes it extremely difficult to sincerely 'forget' about any one quilt. It's hard to believe this top has been ready for applique since April and I've just been steadfastly ignoring it.*wince

Auditioning color and shape

I finally got the mojo to dig it out of the project totes and start figuring out the details for the larger applique motifs it always seemed to desire. I knew if it could just get to the point of being ready for hand stitching, then most of my agonizing would be gone. The problem was, this was a large applique endeavor, taking over most of the top of a quilt. It's a time thing really. Did I actually have hours and hours to dedicate to figuring out this one quilt? And eventually, yes. Yes I did. Because I wanted it to happen too badly to let it fade away at the back of a shelf forever.

In transferring ideas from the original drawing into templates, some of the units were large enough that I really struggled with wanting to unnecessarily 'waste' too much freezer paper. It was kind of funny when I happened upon an old roll of Christmas paper and the light bulb went off in my brain! Oh yes! Much better than using smudgy old newspaper sheets!

Christmas paper works too

And it's always kind of interesting cutting out the individual pieces of fabric and laying them onto the quilt. Placement here? Or there? Will this work better? Definitely not that fabric... etc., etc. The process is a little uncomfortable at times, requiring decision after decision after decision. 

Figuring out the details

It can be the silliest of things that take oodles of time. In this case, it was the slivers of narrow fabric over the top of the sun. I'm just not sure if they will look right if they match up too exactly with the lower sun rays. Hmmm...

A very small change

But then I sort of love the way it pulls the eye right into examining the sun so much more closely! It gives a better energy in some ways. Ah..., those dreadful decisions. Love them and hate them. It feels marvelously good to have all the prep work done on the largest sun here, and the vine plus lower leaf units. I won't actually be doing any handwork here until the commission quilt is done and mailed off but this feels like a weight off. I'm so relieved that my procrastination didn't end up making the whole effort feel flat and uninspired. You know how some ideas have an expiration date and you don't even realize it until you're knee deep in trying to successfully implement it? I've learned the hard way that some quilts won't wait forever.

Applique prep ready to go!

In case you're interested, here are the two doodle drawings that ended up competing for design details. As you can see, I chose this first pic.

Inspiration doodles

The second one was very tempting, but I so wanted to have more options for using up the yellow fabrics especially. Also, this sun applique will nicely dovetail with this 2022 AHIQ Prompt. I am very, very behind on completing that particular challenge because there was way too many ideas floating around in my head. Many of us are too aware of how often that can make a sort of paralysis happen in the decision making department. I've been contemplating the merits of both of these designs for literally months now!

Inspiration doodles

Another quick applique project that needed attention was this 'worthy' block. It will probably be the only applique in a entire quilt made up of improv. piecing, but this time I wanted to start here, not with the piecing. This pineapple motif was lifted from a previous quilt made in 2021. That quilt was gifted to one of my DIL's so I get to see it often when visiting. Lets hope the rest of this quilt will be half as interesting as the first one!

Worthy quilt

Also happening in the quilt room was this 'Good Vibes' quilt top coming together. I have wanted to make another awkward tulip quilt for years and years after completing this Spring Forward quilt. There's just something so quirky and endearing about the clumsy lines in an out-of-proportion-tulip-look. 

Good Vibes quilt

Now that I'm looking at this picture though, I am deeply regretting not putting the purple and coral center piecing directly inside of the tulip petals. Wouldn't that have looked sweet poking out of the middle of the flower? Oh well. Not fixing it now! Next up will probably be some sort of outside border because of course I can't resist that particular challenge.

Close up of the large tulips

Something completely unrelated to recent work, but just too cute too pass up.... I happened across this picture of an older quilt of mine with some little hooligans wrestling around on it. This quilt was gifted to a close friend of ours years and years ago. After she passed away, earlier this year, it found its way to one of her sons family home and that's how I stumbled across it on Instagram! 

Monkey Wrench quilt

I love that her family wanted to hang on to the quilt as so many times, the younger generation doesn't have the same attachment as the original recipient. Once, years ago, one of my gifted quilts ended up in a dumpster! Ugghh... Why not give it to a second hand store? And yes, I got permission to post the picture if I made sure not to add names and physical address etc. 

BBI centerpiece

BRAMBLE BLOOM QAL: All of the stitching is now done on my centerpiece which helps me progress on details for the next prompt. I've been working on it, but unfortunately, most of that will have to wait until after the Thanksgiving holiday and all of our out-of-town guests leave to go home. As before, I'm not quite sure how much information to try and provide without dulling things down to the point of exhaustion for the more experienced improv. quilters. It might be best to break it up into two different posts? We'll see.

Anyone who has posted a comment requesting to join the BBI participants list and NOT received a reply back from me via email needs to privately send me an email or drop your email address into a comment here on the blog. Anonymous commenters are a real thing here at Blogger. Please check too as your name might be at the top of the comment, but the email link will have been disabled due to your privacy settings I believe. Which only you can change! Very frustrating for all of us. 

Sorry for the confusion, but the participants list is only for those quilters who choose to publicly share their progress so as to give other participants the chance to go take a look and perhaps receive encouragement /and/or get inspiration for their own work. There are many other quilters who have notified me that they too are silently working on this QAL, but choose not to have social media for whatever reason. I do not and will not ever have a master list of every single quilter who chooses to take part in this--though of course it would be very interesting!

In other news, my husband has been sick for the past week. Naturally, this is absolutely wrecking my schedule, both in preparing the QAL posts and also, getting ready for our holiday company. Boohoo.  So, so thankful that our daughter gets to come home for Thanksgiving and we finally get precious grandbaby hugging time! In fact, all of our kids will be home this year. Love it! I've been trying to pre-bake the rolls and get them all in the freezer this week. So ambitious of me. Using a recipe where you only partially bake them and then cook them more fully the day of? It has to be better than the absolute chaos we usually endure trying to prepare a holiday dinner with only one oven!