Life has me frazzled.

If I didn't make the time to start a new quilt today, I was going to wind up locked away in a nice quiet room somewhere. It's not the frazzled part that's the problem, it's been the lack of fabric-y playtime to balance it out.

For the past few days, I've been drafting quilts in my head, trying to figure out how many two inch strips it will take to make the log cabin blocks the same size as the applique chicken blocks, and which way to twist them to make things line up the way I want them to, and what that might look like with different fabric combinations.... but I can't do that in my head, so all I succeed in doing is making myself long for time with actual fabric.

One of the blocks I've been playing with in my imagination is this one:



The magazine pattern is called Grandma's Donuts and those wedges are itty-bitty. Just the right size to cut from the strings in my bin that seemed to wide and clunky for string quilts. I was reasonably sure that I could piece the wedges, but not how (or if) I was going to be able to applique them to the background squares. The pattern itself doesn't offer any suggestions, just "applique."

I got my quarter circle close enough to the right shape, pressed the raw edges under, machine zig zagged it to the background, and am reasonably happy with the results. Now I get to trace around the template a zillion more times to cut a zillion more wedges.

I'm actually looking forward to it.

The "loose ends" list is getting shorter -- I managed to cross off three projects the first week and make progress on most of the rest.

This quilt now has a binding and I'm even more in love with it than I was before.



Isn't it amazing what you can do with a bunch of 2 1/2" squares, a pattern from an old library book, and the desire to see if you can actually make that quilt?

I also finished the Marilyn apron. Four bucks for the fabric, which I love, and nine bucks for the pattern, which didn't live up to my hopes and expectations, even though I read through it before deciding to splurge on the thing.

I'm kinda wishing I hadn't cut up the fabric. Or, better yet, had bought a lot more of both colors.