Playing Chicken

I lost at playing thread chicken this past week. I was getting down to the last motif on the Strawberry/paisley fizz quilt when the Finesse brand spool quit. Luckily, I had a similar color way of Omni, no one will ever know :).

The Fall foliage top is together and I like it. I was thinking of quilting it with a raindrop panto because it reminds me of a puddle with autumn leaves in it. The purple sort of looks like asphalt to me, in a good way, the darkness against the colorful leaves. After finishing the foliage, I decided to pull out another pattern from Krista Moser, called Summer Swag. This one also uses the 60 degree diamond rulers. I still have a bunch of fabric from the Nancy Rink line called El Camino. You may remember the El Camino BOM, from a while ago, and more recently the Wall Flower quilt from 1/2022. There is still quite a bit of yardage left over and time for it to go. I started by sewing the stars together, a half hexagon, 6 triangle and two diamonds. What could be easier? I pieced and pressed and soon had the ten halves I needed. Only as I looked at them on the design wall, something bothered me. The yellow six pointed stars , oh no, not a design element that worked. I recently finished reading “The Nightingale” by Kristin Hannah, it is about two sisters during the German occupation of France. The book/story had an emotional impact on me, as one would expect, and those stars had to go. I took them all apart, and re-sewed them into multicolored stars. I am liking them much more now.

I stitched a bit on the Rose of Sharon blocks, and got another one done. The MinaB block did not get appliquéd yet, maybe today. The lure of the new Summer Swag top may supersede it though. I am feeling a little like I should get another block of Simple Days done too. What I should do is get the Memory quilt loaded on the long arm and stitch a Simple days while the computer does its thing. First I have to get the client to pick a Panto, I think they may be feeling overwhelmed with choices. I gave them a few search terms and sites to look for the designs, and haven’t heard back from them yet. I think I should have sent them two or three to choose from, I forget that not everyone is comfortable choosing quilting pantos. Speaking of, while I was running out of thread the other day, I started to sort all my digital designs with the new to me software. I have close to 2400(?!?) designs, and its gonna take some time. Thankfully it’s a “select, drag and drop” process, coming up with all the categories requires a bit of thinking though.

The next Fabulous House was released yesterday, the Light House. I really like it, and would consider making it as a stand alone piece. The Barn is growing, I stitched the cupola last night, and the outline of the roof. I think I am about half way done, the rectangle that forms the body of the barn is 36 rows of 70 stitches, which is 2520 little X-es. Phew.