A Little Here, A Little There....

It's been an odd week so far.  Still hot and so my quilt room is not the place to hang around in for too long.  I've had these mini cake stand blocks all cut out for awhile and so I head upstairs and plug away at them a little at a time.  Doesn't feel like I'm making much progress, but there is an awful lot of them.  These are just the base block for each set (without the bottom of the basket sewn on yet).  I wanted to check and make sure the colors were playing nice before I went any further.

Partial Mini Cake Stands

All of my kids were gone for several hours one day, so I decided to take advantage.  I pulled out this Broken Dishes project and played with it for awhile.  I finally decided to keep to the original sashing width, chose a fabric and got it all cut out.  Then I contemplated the center squares for the sashing until my eyeballs wanted to scream.

Broken Dishes Park Deux

White seemed too bright and/or in-your-face and all the other colors were busy, busy, busy.  Then I remembered a stack of black and gray squares I had from a fabric trade a bazillion years ago.  Wallah!  Very exciting to me when I get to use up random bits and pieces of leftover projects or something that has been lying about feeling neglected for years.*wink

Now I just need to wait for another day when the kids are all busy elsewhere so I can take over the living room floor again.  This quilt top is obviously not going to go together easy and I want the blocks to be properly balanced if at all possible.  It is possible isn't it?  I'm still weighing my options for the setting triangles.  Traditional?  Or not?  Yes, no, maybe so.....

The Geese Look Happier Now

Do you ever have one of those days when it just feels like you're gonna jump out of your skin if you can't get in some good quilting time?  Today happened to be one of those days for me.  I have several projects that I could (and should) be working on, but those little half square triangles just looked pretty interesting today....

My geese are flying kinda crazy these days....

I promptly started rearranging the few I had lined up on the design wall.  They didn't look very happy to me at all.  Funny how they seemed to look a little too staid and pompous in those precise little rows and.... what if??

So yeah, don't read anything to deep into my wonkiness play day with the hst's.  It was all in good fun.  The rotary cutter felt real good in my hand and the sewing was a breeze not having to worry about little pointy points on my triangles.*wink  Overall, I think I made a pretty good start on a fun quilt today and managed to make the most of my minuscule quilting time.  (Not to mention completely eliminating any need whatsoever of ironing hundreds of little blocks and quite possibly squaring them up.)

Hand Stitching on Sunday's and Every Other Day of the Week Too

I am not quite to that point where it feels like good progress is being made every single time I quilt.  Close, but I can tell it will be another frame or two of very slow-go.

Getting a little more done...

 I was hand quilting late the other night while one of my daughters was visiting with me.  It was one of those conversations that it's really better for the teenager to bring up first so I was trying to be very casual about it. You know what I mean.  Then after awhile I realized I was being very casual about my stitching at the same time.  Oh well.  At this stage of my life my children are way more important than my quilting.  lol  I suppose they always will be!

I like the way the stitching shows up on this backing

I usually sew together a couple pieces of printed fabrics for the backing so this 'almost solid' fabric used as backing is something I have had little experience with.  I really like how the quilting pattern shows up, but at the same time I'm extremely critical aware of my random BIG stitches and other imperfections.  (Refer to the previous paragraph if you wonder how much sleep I'm going to lose over this.*wink)

My stack of 1/2 square triangles blocks 

I'm not sure how many blocks I ripped apart this week, but I have a pretty good stack of these little half square triangles now.  They need to be ironed and I'm wondering if I ever even squared them up?  Maybe not.  I don't always.  I slapped several up on the design wall while my mother-in-law was taking a nap and considered my options.  Hmmm, I'm thinking something vertical.  And the more I think about it, I like the idea of of a primitive look with the flying geese and not even square them up at all.  Then I could add in a little applique somewhere and hmmmm... yeah, this could be a fun project!

Testing, testing, testing....

I'm linking up to Kathy's Quilts again for her 'Hand Stitching on Sundays' link-up.  Hand work may feel like it takes forever to get anything accomplished, but the rewards are awesome!  (That's an 80's term I use mostly because it embarrasses my kids.....)