Friday, September 30, 2016

How in the heck?

Even though I completed amassing i6 a couple of days ago, somehow this morning, I had second thoughts about a tiny handful of choices.

Yup.

Oops.

Currently on the hunt for two replacement pieces. Dagnabbit!  I'll let you know how I fared in a few hours.


Sunday, September 25, 2016

How the day ends

Back and forth and back and forth.  A little bit here and a little bit there, but mostly I worked in one place - over there.
LOL



i6 is not complete, but it is about as close as can be, and once I get the mess on the table out of my own way I should have no trouble finding those last few inches.  i7 is one-quarter in place, too, so the day wasn't a total loss.  Not really.


Nope

I did not manage to complete laying out i6, but I did begin i7.

I KNOW - what the heck is up with me, right?

There are just under a dozen missing bits to i6, which I totally intend to nail down today... throughout the day. . . eventually.  Please, God, let it be so.  But there is a top I would like to allow myself to complete for work, and housework to get to that has also been skillfully ignored for a while, so in all honesty I do have a list of needful things to get to that should supersede i6.

LOL - who do I think I'm kidding?  See you in a while with a photo and a wickedly pleased grin.


Saturday, September 24, 2016

Moving in the right direction

Wandered into my quiltmaking hole about 10AM intending to make a positive dent in i6.

And I did!  Down from 20 to 16, and made a few substitutions along the way.


Today will be a good day

Over the last week I worked (so, no time with my dear Dutchman).  I also ferried 'people' back and forth to school and tutoring and appointments - and I had an appointment or two myself.

Then there was the lost time spent searching for my keys. Holy crap, what a pain and time drain.

But, I have found my keys - quite by accident - and things are nearly back to normal, so... YEA!

In truth, I actually tried to sneak a bit of time in here and there working on my 'color dance', but didn't get very much accomplished.  In fact, I began the week with only seventeen missing inches, and was determined to make a dent the moment I could return to it.  And did I?  Did I make a dent?

Yes, I dented it, but I dented it in the wrong direction.  Somehow I find myself with twenty missing inches to fill in this morning.  I blame karma and pangs of guilt for the turnaround in progress.  So let's see if I can reverse the tide and finish i6 today, shall we?

What are you working on?


Saturday, September 17, 2016

Thirty to go

Having a tough time finding the rest of i6, so I suppose there's a mighty amount of picking up and sorting to do before I can/should proceed.  Also happily using the last of the true yellows.


Thursday, September 15, 2016

Did I forget to mention . . . ?

Finished i5 a few days back, but haven't had any time to update here.  And, yes, i6 is well underway.

Feeling "cheeky."


Sunday, September 11, 2016

THREE!

Three missing inches - that's all.  Three, and then I can stitch i5 together. . . but it's not going to happen today.  I have something equally as important (and potentially exciting) to get done.  So this is me walking away from my Dutchman for the day.


Saturday, September 10, 2016

Fifteen to go

That deserves a big woohoo!

BUT, it's still too dark to do a proper job, so the rest is on hiatus.

Friday, September 9, 2016

70+

Seventy plus inches found.  i5 is coming together. :v)


Thursday, September 8, 2016

A promise is a promise

Here are i3 and i4 side-by-side. . .









. . .and here's a shot of the corrections that had to be made. Yes, there was a lot of seam ripping that had to be done.

Holy crap, I wish I could figure out how I managed to make such a series of flip-flop errors.  Well, after two hours of ripping and re-sewing, everything was A-OK again.


Did I forget to mention. . .

I may have forgotten to say that i5 is about one-third in place.

There are many other things to work on around the ol' hacienda, but I do hope to throw a few hours towards i5 throughout the day.  There will be a photo of some sort posted later today, so stay tuned.  Or... visit again tomorrow.

Have a great day.


Friday, September 2, 2016

When thinking can be a bad thing

There's all sorts of thinking that can be done; simple thoughts to highly complex contemplating.  Thinking that leads to conclusions (which could possibly affect countless others) or those dozens of aimless daydreams we have every day.  I won't drone on because I think you catch my drift.

Well, I've been ruminating - the serious sort of thought conjuring, too, not that simpleton stuff.  Nope, I've been having some Olympic-sized cranium sessions, wondering about my future, postulating about my current circumstances, and hair-splitting things I have already done - which, let's face it, never does anyone any good.

At any rate, my inner dialogues about this current long-term quilt thing have led me to wonder if I've made more work for myself by creating a very large material cache to choose from.  When I began constructing the 100-piece blocks my aim was to use what I had on my shelves.  Surely this would be enough (because I have a stupidly large, and very diverse stash).  And seeing the color selection as finite, I made do when choosing each inch; I was happy to have something "close enough." There was no laboring over every color pixel, the blocks came together quickly, and I factored the quilt top would be finished in one and one-half years.

Well, that was back in April of 2013.  Since then, every time I have realized I could add more greys to my background selection, or have expanded my choices of yellows and flesh tones, I have also managed to grow the time expended on building out each block.  The more precise I have tried to get to matching the actual, the more time it takes to complete one block.  What once was 4-5 hours of finding and 2.5 hours of sewing is now days in the making.

TOO MUCH THINKING!
Too many choices.
Way too much perfection.

I may need to re-evaluate what I am allowing myself as a palette.  Perhaps simplifying would be a good course of action if I ever want to see the completion of this monster.  Or... maybe I am afraid of finishing this.

As you can see, I have given this a lot of thought. Maybe it's time to stop thinking and just go for it.


Thursday, September 1, 2016

Post script to i4

I had a chance to work on i4 last Saturday (after returning from a commercial shoot), and found some time to make a dent on it today.  Finally!

It's up to just over sixty found inches, and that feels good.  Not great, but it's better progress than the usual.