Empty Design Wall

I'm down to the last two days to get myself ready to head back north.  Since I don't know for sure if I'll be back before quilt camp to get my quilt supplies, I need to be ready with all my supplies and projects along with anything else I may find time to work on at my dad's.  Better to have everything with me than to be without necessary items.  At the rate I'm going, I may have to rent a storage locker in my dad's town!

Above are four bins with individual projects.  
     There's Stairstepper, which has been assigned, and for which fabric had been set aside, but that's as far is it had been worked.  
     Another is Gathered Over Time, written about here and here.  I had the 9-Patches done but had not cut the solid squares, so that is done and I need only sew block to block and row to row.
     Yet another is Sister's Choice, also written about here.  I had kept a row up on my design wall but took it down today to keep all the parts together.  I have less than half the blocks completed so there's plenty of work to do there.
     And, lastly, a completely new project: Subtle Charm.  I found this pattern, in one of my intact The Quilter Magazine from I think 2000.  And the fabric I chose has been sitting in my stash since I believe 2005.  I had wanted to use it for a quilt for our master bed.  It seemed I pretty much had the quantities of fabrics needed, though my color-way is completely different than the pattern.  Most of the fabrics are Moda's Robyn Pandolph 'Bed of Roses' design. One of the pieces of fabric is shown below.  That was the only one of the four fabrics required that I was a bit short on.  What do you do when short?  Why you run to the internet - knowing the fabric is nearly 10 years old!!  And in only minutes, I find someone selling an entire yard on eBay with a starting bid of $4.50 plus s/h and no bids.  Guess who bid $4.50?  And there was less than two hours remaining :)  I had to set up an eBay account, then figure out with Marty's help how to pay it through Paypal, and the seller was VERY prompt and it is on it's way to me.  The only problem, and it's not really a problem for me, is that it won't arrive here until Tuesday, maybe Monday, but I'll be on the road Monday.  Still okay, as the additional fabric needed accommodates the outer border and binding, so I can still do everything up to the outer border.  I am happy.

 I pre-cut as much as I could on all of these projects because with limited space at quilt camp, I didn't want to hog the table set up as a cutting station; better to have it all done ahead of time.

 Now, here you're probably wondering why I'm showing you the package from my printer's ink.  See that little triangular paper drawing (i.e. template).  Well, the pattern calls for that and I don't have one of that size in a purchased template, and I couldn't find my template plastic, so, remember the old phrase "necessity is the mother of invention"?  Uh, huh, I 'invented' my own template plastic from the plastic case of the ink.

You can barely make out the plastic case after being trimmed of the back molded portion and the cardboard insert. 

I've trimmed it down to a useable piece, saving the rest.  You never know when you might need more! 

 I couldn't find the skinny permanent marker but had one of these Micron Pigma pens and a little ruler and traced the pattern.  I'd taped the plastic to the paper because I didn't want any slips.

 Seeing double?

 Clear tape! Yes, because I didn't want to take any chances in smearing those new lines and/or having the lines rub off.  Not that I'll be really using the lines.  In fact, all I'm really needing this for it seems, is to lop off the points at all three triangle corners.  I'm sure I'll be happy I do that when I get to that point, but it's probably something I could work with even without the template.  Had I read that far into the pattern, I probably would have dismissed it completely as soon as I read 'template'.  That's how I am.

 The finished template, bubbles in the tape and all.

Oh, and who do we have here?  No, she is not traveling with me, and I'll miss her.  I'd opened my bin of Bow Tie Sets to get that re-organized to also include with my packing, and Raven decided since she's a Tuxie, she needed a Bow Tie.  Funny how the label hits right about where a tie should be, lol.  She was quite content to be there, in my way, and has done this repeatedly with other fabric and papers when I have them on the table.  As you can see, she's quite the chunk and fills up that bin.