I'm finished now with a huge load of Henry Glass projects, which will get shared in a couple of weeks, so I'm back to my normal priority and break-work routines.
The priority is Devon and Kyle's wedding quilt. I have a good start on the initial stitch-in-the-ditch work. All the white ribbons are outlined, and all but 3 pair of the birds. My thread order arrived for the colors I didn't already have on hand, so I can attack the rings any time now.
Devon liked the motif that's traced into the centers of the rings, so I bought the digital set. The really fun part is that I could draw out her engagement ring's pattern to fit the melons very nicely, and it plays right along with the professional set. When I'm working on those parts and you can see better what I'm talking about, I'll look up the name and link for you. All the outer blue will be an organic blend of feathers, breezes, and motif uses from the digital set. That's still several weeks away, though, so I don't have to face that intimidation just yet.
I'm not giving as much priority time to this right now as I usually do for priority finishes, though. That's because on Sunday I got working on that week's Block of the Month focus, which is the DOD Americana quilt-along that I'm using for Scott's Air Force retirement quilt for next summer. I'm using only scraps and stash, which means this happens once a month when I work on this project:
The scrap bin gets pawed through and dumped out, three McKenna Ryan left-overs boxes get opened, and potentially relevant FQs and yardages from stash get pulled into the work area. Usually it lasts only one day. This time, it stayed out because I didn't want a third row sitting around partially finished. (The last row really intimidated me when it came time to trace out those military settings for the fusible pieces and then having to find fabrics that will work for each thing. So it sat, incomplete, all this time.)
This. Drives. Me. NUTS!!!!! I am far from a great housekeeper, preferring greatly to work on quilts than to do dishes or mop floors. And I am comfortable in a certain level of daily lived-in, yet organized "mess". This, however, is pure chaos. So I can't focus for more than an hour in a day on the wedding quilt until this project is caught up and everything is re-binned and tucked nicely into my storage room again.
Here is what I accomplished the last two days. It's 11 x 62 inches finished size, and was a super fun row to put together:
If you're familiar with this QAL, you'll see that I changed it up a bit, and I showed that in my last post.
Here are the two previous rows that still need attention:
The birdhouses will be simple. That row just needs some door holes, a few birds. and an Uncle Sam hat or two. The military row - oh, boy. That one is going to be challenging and demanding. I'm going to ask Scott for a Scrap-Attack date tonight and have him help me pull out pieces that will work for the various vignettes from Bosnia, Korea, Oman, and Afghanistan. The central office one I should be able to handle on my own. By week's end I want this finished and scraps squared away! I need my peace of mind back for the FMQ intensity! Also - other family members would be really happy to be able to use the pool table again! Can we just say: #800dollarquiltstagingtable #kindacrazy
I've finished enough older UFOs now that my scrap bin is cram-packed. So I finally started sorting the mess into divisions as I was working on the church last night. So far there's "Brown-and-Such" and "Black-and-Gray" pulled out of the main mess. I'll divide the rest into maybe 4 more sub-bins as Scott and I pull things out for his personal row. I guess I need to swing by Home Depot to get a bunch of storage bins that will work for this system, since I know I'll continue working with scraps periodically.
I hope your week is going well and your work space is happier than mine right now!! :D
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