Design Wall Monday, 18 January 2016

Last week was all about my "Black Tie Party" of scrappy bow ties on a solid black background.  I've progressed no further than getting a feel for where I am with that project and making sure I have the unit sets needed.  I was missing a piece or two, and couldn't find a match in my scraps or precuts so those pieces became scraps themselves with other fabrics replacing them.  I've put the bow ties away again for now.  

Bow Tie sets

After reviewing Scrap O' Nine Tails and having worked on the strip sets as of last week's post, I also recalculated how big I wanted the quilt and proceeded to prep the fabric for, and cut, the alternating plain blocks.  I calculated that I needed 336 plain blocks, and 336 pieced 9-Patch blocks.  

336,  2 3/4" neutral squares

Sampling of 9-Ps and alternating squares.

The finished size of each 9-P and of each plain square will be 2 1/4".  Using neutrals as the background (alternating squares) and also in so many of the 9-Ps, it seems a bit blah, but warm in overall tone.  Some of the fabrics are pretty bright (note the blue & red in the upper right corner) yet so many of these fabrics are from the '80s and '90s with their Americana hues and patterns, as with the red and tan stripe near the center and the small red and tan plaid in the lower left corner.  This is truly a scrap-tastic project and has at least 190 or more different fabrics in it.

This has now been packed away as well with a much clearer record and plan put on paper. 

I'll be pulling out and reviewing my Spools project next.  It was also begun as a Leader/Ender project.

Another thing I did last night, so I would know where I stand in my projects, was to review my Excel spreadsheet as to what stage my projects are in, and how many are in certain stages.  I discovered:

• 4 are pinned and ready to quilt
• 17 are flimsies and could be pinned
• 5 need borders to become flimsies
• 1 has completed blocks ready to be sewn into rows
• 5 have all pieces cut and some sewing has been done on them
• 3 have all pieces cut but nothing sewn
• 3 have been chosen to do and assigned a project number but nothing has been done on them other than some fabric selection

I have my work cut out for me.  I'll be doing busy work this week most likely.  So many new projects keep calling to me, but from looking at this list, I really need to get some of these done and 'out the door'.  

Don't forget to head over to Patchwork Times to see what else is happening among our quilt/blog friends.