Boy & Skirt

After multiple delays, I've managed to get a couple days worth of this project done.  To make me feel better about the progress I did an estimate and I've fused about 3216 squares into place.  That made me so accomplished until I discovered that I'm only 1/2 done.  However, the remaining sections are sky and umbrella, so I anticipate that they will go much faster than the sections I've finished that have 30 or more different colors to place.

This section is the boy in the background and the lady's skirt on the right, with grass and flowers in the foreground.  I ended up replacing the background around the boy's face to give more contrast.  I substituted some blues in his shirt for contrast as well.  As I was working on the lower portions of the skirt, I took to making multiple substitutions.  I ran out of 3 of the grey-greens and 2 of the light blues.  So much for all that careful planning.  I may have to go back and swap out some of the new colors on the finished panels for the sake of continuity.  There is also a blue in the sky that I think has too much contrast (see the dark spots above the boy's head).  Fortunately, I didn't use a super hot iron when fusing these in place, so most of the squares for replacement come up without much fuss.  Of course, this new need to check and potentially replace color placement means that I can't start sewing the panels until everything is fused.  The other challenge is finding a space large enough to lay it all out.  Since they are 1.5" squares butted up to one another, my 108" finished length is 13.5 ft in the lay-out form.

Oh, and last night when I couldn't stand this project any longer, I finished up Joseph's Coat block #43.  I have  4 outer petals to sew to finish blocks 44 & 45.  The last 4 blocks, I only placed the center petals, figuring that I might want to have some unfinished for when I do the final lay-out.  Hopefully I can get that done this weekend.