judyinohio said:

learned some common sense by now

I've noticed a tendancy about people, they seem to make similar mistakes over and over, especially with regard to relationships.

Dee in TX (DBRADFOR3) said...

tendancy about people, they seem to make similar mistakes over and over, especially with regard to relationships.

You are SOOO right!

I'm just heartsick about Other Daughter because I see the same "stars in her eyes" that I saw eighteen years ago when she came bouncing into my house to tell me she was (1) pregnant and (2) going to marry the kid she had had a crush on in high school who was father of baby and (3) all this while her mom was dying of pancreatic cancer.

That "kid" (the father of her neurotic son) was a drunk in high school and is still a drunk who is supported by his mother.

I won't bore you with any more details because this is not a soap opera website but rest assured I will not be sending Lily Aurora to live with Other Daughter for some time.

Maybe never.

I might give up and sell the machine.

In the meantime I am following instructions in the Scrappy Improv Quilting book (by Kelly Young) and cutting my bright colorful scraps into "bits", "pieces" and "strips" and putting them into small shallow baskets for future use. I can see myself making at least three smalllish quilts from this book and possibly more. The author sure is a clever woman. I am emptying out my collection of bright batiks that I had used for years in making all of those color wheels.

I like the ideas in her paperbound book so much that I took the book to Office Depot and had the clerk cut off the spine, punch  holes in the book and insert a spiral coil so that the book now lies flat on the table. Best $5 you can spend on a quilt project when you are going to use nothing but scraps; this flat book will be so much easier to use when I am studying the various ideas in it.

Beautiful, Ami.  I knew it would be after seeing those first blocks at the retreat.  I'm sure your quilting will only enhance it's beauty.

Your Inner Block quilt will be a beauty.  I hope you don't wait forever to actually quilt it.

I did that with all my paper piecing books.  Easier to copy the patterns if they will lay flat.

Cathy (cacnurse1) said:

I hope you don't wait forever to actually quilt it.

Oh, I'm afraid quilting is an entirely different project.  :-/

wrt Inner Cube, my current EPP project:  in addition to the black and white prints, there are spots of color in the form of Tumbling Blocks, both small (1" diamonds) and large (2" diamonds.   In order to get the 3D effect of a Tumbling Block, you need to have 3 fabrics in light-medium-dark shades.  They don't necessarily need to be in the same color family but they do need to appear to have that light-medium-dark contrast.

To provide a LOT of color values, the Pink Door (the store that is selling the kits, etc) has supplied 55 ... FIFTY-FIVE Tula Pink fabrics, both solids and prints.  The amounts range from a 1/4 yard to 1/3 yard.  The schematic of the layout definitively shows you *what* specific color combinations are to be used in which star wreath and precisely *where* that color combo is to be placed.  But, boy, do you need to pay attention!

Here's a photo of the 55 fabrics that I've laid out on my cutting table.  I've pinned a small label on each fabric, identifying which color number it is.  For the small Tumbling Blocks, you cut a WOF strip, 1.75" wide and cut your 60° diamonds from it.  I've then pinned all the diamonds of that color to the yardage of that color.  The colors are arranged on my cutting table in numerical order, in groups of 10s, for easy selection.

So that I don't become confused ... or more confused? ... I do only ONE Tumbling Block at a time.  I pull the 3 fabrics required.  Select a diamond from each color.  Prepare the EPP shape with the fabrics then CAREFULLY stitch the 3 diamonds together, in the proper color arrangement, so that all of the Tumbling Blocks have the same light-medium-dark fabrics in the same orientation in the star wreath.  Have I mentioned that you need to PAY ATTENTION?!?!???

That's what I'm doing now.  

I'm enjoying reading about this project.

I'm glad it is you, dear Pirate, who is the worker bee working on this and sharing your experience for I am too faint of heart to consider such a thing these days. In my younger years I did tackle ambitious things (dozens of fine wool yarns to keep track of in needlepoint work, for example) so I've been there, done that but now it's my time to cheer on other talents.