Planning Future Projects

Last week I made a concerted effort to clean up my sewing room. Whew!! It had been way too long since last I'd put any real effort into putting things straight. New project tubs were purchased, as were larger tubs to hold the new fabric I'd recently bought. I'll post a couple of pics later this week of my clean space.
What I really want to talk about today is the wonderfully freeing feeling a clean room gives me! My gracious! It's like I finally can think and breathe in there! Just one evening in my neat and tidy space and I was pulling fabrics and sketching patterns and planning big (and small) projects!

1. I've decided which Schnibbles I will make for the May "your choice" parade. Selected the fabric, too!

2. About a year ago I bought a 20" square panel from Flag Day Farm. It's been hanging on my design wall, waiting to be made into something. I've had the notion that I'd do a medallion quilt with it, but it took a clean room to get a really good idea for proceeding. That is what I tried sketching out. I fear this little endeavor will require a fair amount of mathematics --horrors! -- but I think I can work it out.

I listed 4 or 5 simple, standard blocks that I like when I admire quilts. Square-in-a-square, pinwheel, Ohio Star, flying geese, 4-patch (or 9-patch). I think I will just use these favorites as I add border after border around this medallion. The math comes in when figuring out the measurements that will insure that the edges of my border match with the center medallion.

3. I really want to make a Kaffe Fassett quilt - he's got 2 beauties in 2 different books that are primarily blue. I will make one of them - haven't yet decided which it will be.

Yep, there will be some doggone pretty creations coming out of this clean sewing room in the next few days and weeks! 

Too Many Starts!

QDD. That's what one blogger calls it--Quilter's Distraction Disorder. The symptoms are an inability to finish a project before beginning another, and another, and another. I suffer from QDD, and to my knowlege, there is no known cure.

At one point last week, I had 5 projects strewn about at the same time. And that's not counting my Broken Dishes blocks which are always out! And I haven't made a new Broken Dishes block in over a month, I'll wager.With all the chaos of these various projects, it was getting to the point that I had no useable workspace to do anything!

First, I had my April Schnibbles going. Since it only needed its borders, I went ahead and finished it.

After getting all the Schnibbles remains out of the way, I started working on Americana Rose, and finished off the 5 blocks with the gazillion-pieced little stars.

Not a very prettty shot, but there are 5 of these buggers. I thought I'd never get those stars made!

Now, for some time I've been telling my daughters that I'd make us some pretty bags. I've collected a few patterns, both purchased and in magazines. Plus, I have loads of Kaffe Fassett fabrics just perfect for a bag. And it only makes sense that if I'm going to make one bag, then why not do 2? I mean really, cut it out in duplicate. Construct them in assembly line fashion. Well, that would work if one had a clean work space... here is as far as I've gotten on bags:

Then, I decided I wanted to make a few more blocks from the Farmer's Wife Sampler book. I have uber-QDD when it comes to deciding which block to make! I haven't printed off all the templates, so I needed to select a block from the templates I had available. That led to just listing the blocks I still want to make along with the templates I needed to print. I also created a list of blocks that could be made from the templates I already had. (You got all that, right?) In some odd free minutes on Saturday, I made these:

Contrary Wife

Puss in the Corner

Rail Fence

Spool

And last night I made this beast:

It's called Morning Star, and it was a doozie! I spent a good portion of my effort picking out stitches. Please don't inspect too closely; there are some very uneven edges and unmatched joints.

Farmer's Wife Sampler is perfect for a sufferer of QDD. I was able to whet my apetite for variety; nothing took overly long to make; I made my work space even messier; and I think I now can return to one of the other projects with the focus required to get it done!

Today, I have worked on Americana Rose again. Since the hard blocks were done, it seemed relatively easy to get the remaining blocks whipped up. I will share pics of these tomorrow!

TTFN!
Jayne