Retreat Prep

A couple of tweaks to the butterfly and I think it's ready to assemble. I want to finish the body section and get it up on the wall before I call it done, however. Just a few more flying geese to make.

In the mean time, I've been trying to clean my sewing room. I have 3 retreats coming up at the end of October, so I figure I need to be super organized in order to ensure I have enough projects to keep me occupied during all of that fabulous sewing time.  So, I've been collecting and organizing bits in my sewing room, and trying to get quilts to a reasonable state to take with me.

This is my "Edge of 17" shop hop from a couple of years ago. I bailed on the last few blocks and decided to just go with what I have. So working on a layout now. Not sure this one will get to a retreat, since it's going to require quite a bit of design wall time.  But at least it is moving out of the "pile of stuff I should finish one day" state.

Half a butterfly

Here it is. I was going to say attempt one, but in reality I think this is number 4 or 5, after rearranging the blocks several times.  It's pretty amazing how much that wing changed after I added the 66 1/2 square triangles to the edges. It softened the whole thing, which I guess makes sense.

Thoughts on colour placement?  I think I'm pretty happy with it overall, but the oranges are so bright should they be either more grouped, or more spread out?  The top right is pretty much a done deal - there are no alternate colourways for the wheel and the log cabin blocks.

Here's a picture from before the triangles were added, with the circles in the lower quadrant moved around.  Maybe I should swap the dark cross at the top with the lighter one near the bottom.

Butterfly bits

All the bits are finished for my butterfly.  Now I just have to figure out how to put it all together

Onward

Continuing to make progress on my Tula Butterfly quilt.  A bit of Orange Crush added into the mix now. These are the "chunk crosses", and I also finished the floating crosses, but I don't seem to have that photo downloaded yet.

I'm really excited to see how this is going to come together, and I've been working on it almost every day this week.  Incentive to get into my sewing room is great - but now I must push myself back to the long arm and finish up a couple of customer commitments for this month.

Seeing Double

Quality time in my sewing room!  It's been a long time coming, but I'm finally feeling back on track with customer quilts, enough that I felt justified in taking a weekend off for my own sewing.  I have been looking forward to starting this project and now here it goes!  This is Tula's Butterfly quilt, done with her new fabric line (Slow and Steady) plus some Kona solids. Can't wait to see the final product, but for now, two of everything seems to be the order of the day.

After a small blip getting started (only made one of each block), I have the first set of blocks complete.

I'm linking up at Patchwork Times (for the first time in a while) over at Design Wall Monday.

New Project

My new project is finally under way!  I spent a couple of hours last night and got these 5 blocks done. Unfortunately,  I can't count and I was supposed to make 10 blocks (5 pairs).  I guess I know what today's project is going to be.

A Sad Demise

Apparently this is what happens when you continue to drop your seam ripper on the floor. I've always been an advocate of solid floors in a sewing room,  rather than carpet. But I do suspect that this would not have happened if I had been dropping the silly thing on carpet.

Now I have to interrupt my sewing to hunt for one of the other seam rippers which I know is hiding in my sewing room.