A new week, but no new projects!

That should be my mantra... NO NEW PROJECTS! But I have made a teensy bit of progress on a current project. After sleeping most of last week because I was sick and finishing a queen sized quilt the week before which will be given to its new owner this week it was high time to get back to the New York Beauty project! So I finished up the second of two pink and orange blocks that I am still not sure I'm wild about and chose colors for the last two blocks of the set of 16.

Yes, I broke out the color wheel for this one because I apparently can't come up with a nice quad color arrangement beginning with purple without a little assistance. I even got a good start on them last night watching TV over the top of the couch... I could get used to this 'sewing machine in the living room' arrangement I have right now. I have a small composite board sitting on a milk crate to my left with some batting and muslin and my mini iron for the pressing and a tiny bit of cutting board space just to the left of the machine. Aside from being pretty cramped it works great for sewing in the evening after the preteen who shares my sewing room has gone to bed - with the added bonus that my husband does not feel abandoned (just ignored! ;-) ). 

So here is the progress on the last two blocks...

And the whole things as it is so far

My least favorite blocks are the pink and orange 8 ray pair that are opposite each other... I think they might be too light or something. Maybe I should replace the current green center with a darker green of the same hue? Would that help? I think I am also not a huge fan of the super narrow rays - I much prefer the 4 or 6 ray blocks. This pair is also one of the only blocks that does not have a solid band between the main rays and the center... maybe that throws things off. What do you think? Should they stay? Do they add something needed to the set or should I rethink the pattern for that spot? I was also not thrilled with the way they went together... too many areas that won't iron flat and lots of bulk at the join between the 8 rays and the 4 rays.- there are no actual puckers, but those areas won't press nice and flat. 

So there is my design wall today. What does yours look like? Check out Design Wall Monday over at Patchwork Times to see what everyone else in blog land is up to this week. 

Friday already

Well, here it is Friday. I feel like I have spent most of the week asleep on the couch! One more in the house has fallen to the bug, although it doesn't seem to be as bad. I thought about posting a "finish" today, goodness knows I have posted about the project here before; but now that it is finished I feel like maybe I should wait until next week after I actually gift it to its new owner before posting it here. So... I do have one more zendala for Erin's challenge. She has posted a new one for the week by now, but I'll link it up if I still can. I went with good old black ink for this one, those pens have a finer nib - I sort of felt like I was using crayons with the colored pens I have! Here it is. Hope you have a great weekend.

Not feelin' it this week...

but trying all the same, and that is what its all about right?
I am weighed down this week by sadness for a friend who lost her 8 year old daughter to a chronic and ultimately fatal disorder that had plagued her from birth. It was particularly poignant for me because I have known this woman for years and my own 8 year old was due the same week as her girl. He has lived, so far, a pretty charmed and healthy life. Whenever I read of the difficulties this little girl was having all I could do was feel both thankful and a little guilty for my own good fortune.

I have also been following with a heavy heart the blogging of a person I have come to respect through her writings as she begins the process of losing her father. Her struggle is unlike mine was this past December in that her father has been able to make the decisions for himself and has had time to have cherished conversations with both his children and grandchildren. My father went precipitously and once the decision was made to keep him comfortable he was asleep and gone within 24 hours, not even long enough for me to get there. She has been kind enough to share some of her feelings about this time and the loss she can see coming.

Between the little girl and the older man, both of whose stories share aspects of my own father's final days I have been introspect and a bit down. On top of that, my three year old has so generously shared yet another illness with me so we are both down with fatigue, wracking coughs and in her case a pretty ferocious fever. We have been sleeping a lot! I have also been completing the final steps on a quilt that will be gifted to its new owner late next week. It is finished! If the wind ever stops blowing I will take a photo...its official portrait. I have fallen off the New York Beauty wagon a bit, I got one new one done... and I don't like it much which is discouraging. I decided to draw a bit while the little girl slept in my lap yesterday and got one done that satisfies both the Zendalla challenge over at The Bright Owl and the Diva challenge for the week. Take a look...

The evenness of the lines and regularity of the motifs is not up to my usual standard... but everything withstanding I like the representation of 'things earthy'. I will play with this Zendalla template more, and maybe do another with earthy things... there are lots of tangles that remind me of earthy stuff! But this is it for now! I am off to paint a certain 3 year old's toe nails and probably read a story or work on rhyming and then go to bed early!

I'm Free!

OK, I've always been 'free' in many senses of the word, but yesterday I actually did some free motion quilting, which has not happened in many moons.
I made the decision to follow the Free Motion Challenge over at SewCalGal at the beginning of the year because it seemed doable... once a month, low commitment. I did January's, worked on February's but did not get enough practice to have a satisfactory result, March's challenge was very ambiguous and I had a heck of a month filled with other things and April's tutorial is about transferring patterns, which is not what really concerns me.
So I have been going back to the tutorials posted at the Free Motion Quilt Along with Leah Day. Initially these seemed pretty high commitment since she posts one every week. I wasn't sure I could keep up! But, I have always admired Leah's quilting and the methodical way in which she approaches things. So far this year she has covered a lot about stippling, which is about the only free motion free hand pattern I am comfortable with and have used in actual quilted items. I have not done it much in a large scale, but the small scale and I are good buddies (there is a small example in the January Challenge entry linked above). So I did not go back and start from the beginning, although I did do some warm ups with some of the ideas in her tutorials. I think the idea of quilting roughly in 'rows' is probably going to help me the most, especially with patterns that are newer to me. I got to sit down for a couple of hours yesterday with some practice sandwiches and some lovely tangerine quilting thread that I got on super clearance - like .50c for a 350yd spool. I played with the Sharp Stippling tutorial for this week. This was what I got...

Larger scale - sorry, it is out of focus

smaller scale

I like this pattern, but I don't think I currently have anything I would use it on. I felt like I was being very repetitive with the motifs in the moment and whenever I tried to throw some variation in there I tended to get myself into trouble. However, when viewed as a finished whole I don't think it looks overly repetitive. I do find that instead of 'flames' my habitual shape looks more like 'whale flukes' and I really have to watch myself because I will throw in an out of place curve instead of a sharp point if I let my mind wander too much. Truly large 'large scale' did not happen... I wonder if it is a factor of the difficulty in moving the fabric and getting the hang of repositioning my hands or if it more that my frugal self wants to fit in as much practice on the small sandwich as I can get!

Then as a reward I quickly sandwiched a mini I just finished and FM quilted that. Here it is with the binding still pinned, although it has been sewn on by hand now. I did not mark the center at all and marked only the spine and a few diagonal placing lines for the feathers. It is cute, but I have no idea what I will use it for. Do you need a practical use for things you make too, or is the creative process enough? I thought I was getting a bit away from the practical urge (I made a mini in the first place didn't I?) but I still have those pangs occasionally (it was made with left over bits cut off other blocks after all... can't waste anything!).

seeing auras...

The Zentangle challenge this week over at The Diva is to use aura's in your tangling... so I sat down and tried a few different things. So many of the patterns have auras built in and so many of the ones that don't do not lend themselves to including them so it was harder than I thought it would be. Here are the two best and a third that was more of a chance to play with a cool new tangle pattern I found several weeks ago, Mi2 that has aura-like lines incorporated in it already.

I like this one pretty well, although I find myself getting stuck on tangles that form a line lately.  I was a little free in my interpritation of 'an aura' in the one case... it leaked out into swirls and loops and ended and began at will.  Florz with an aura really changes the focus and usual appearance of the pattern.

In this one the 'Nzeppel is the most effected by the aura I think, again changing the whole appearance. The Sanibelle is interesting with the single aura and I really like the boxy look of the Hollibaugh with the auras - it looks mechanical and jittery. 

This was me playing with Mi2. I had lots of fun with the swirlies on the side. 

More Beauties

I have been plugging away at my NYB blocks. I need 4 more to complete the 4x4 layout I have in mind right now. The colors are becoming a little more challenging because I have some restrictions set by what has been used already and how to make it balanced and right in the layout I have in mind. I will need one set of two from one pattern that are both colored the same, and one set of two from another pattern that are colored differently to complete the scheme.

While piecing these blocks I have managed to complete the set of HST blocks for another quilt center (right) and border a little mini that was trimmings left over from something else. Yea for efficiency!
To see what other industrious quilters are up to today check out DWM over at Patchwork Times. I am off this morning to pick up the teacher quilt I have posted about from the long arm quilter... I am anxious to see how the quilting has come out. Have a great Monday.

Finally some Zentangle action...

I have been seriously out of sorts with my tangling efforts since the beginning of the year. When I have had the time (which hasn't been often) to sit and tangle I have been sorely disappointed in my efforts. I have tried to keep up with the challenges presented by The Diva but have not actually posted one in months, although a few have been even been finished. Through it all I figured that it was just a matter of over-thinking... in the beginning I was just making random stabs at it and doing passingly well. Then the process got a bit too cerebral and that took the natural flow away and I had the previous good results to 'live up to'. I needed to get back in there and just do it and get over the slump. Sometimes I just want to quickly draw one or two patterns over and over with no plan and no expectation of a decent looking whole in the end and I have let myself do that some too which has helped. So along comes a different challenge... or 'dare' as she calls it over at "The Bright Owl". Erin will be posting mandala templates for tangling and hosting a link-up each time. I thought that the new format might just bump me out of my rut. So here is the result for the first 'dare'... two versions.

I should have chosen something other than paradox for those inner triangles... it loses so much of its punch in isolation like that. I'm not sure what I was doing in the four circles... but I like it as a whole - ironically it looks better in this smaller version than it does in my book! As usual, the Mooka lends a bit of a deco feel to the whole thing. 

I like the garden-y feel of this second one... a little Tufted, a little Facets, some Fescu and an uneven Fengle in the middle. I love how the unbounded sides of Mumsy look like they are larger than the bounded sides... totally an illusion since it all fits in the same original circle. Overall sort of spring like - also looking better here than in my book. Maybe I should scan all my pieces in and look at them on the computer, maybe I would be happier with the results more regularly!

So thanks to Erin for daring us to try the Zendalla format. It should be interesting to see what comes of it.