Visible Progress

I've been trying to clear the Living/Sewing Room of projects in preparation for the Super Bowl.

I posted my feathers on green Wed night after I'd finished, but wanted to show it from the back side.  It really isn't as bad as the previous picture suggested.  After a good washing, that cotton batting should make it look down-right wonderful.

When I started this morning, the FMQ foot was still on the machine, so I pulled out one of the crazy patch panels which will go into the Fall Stripe quilt that each of these FMQ practice panels will become.

This is the fill from the back - the heart shape leaves from the FMQ challenge January tutorial with the spiral variation posted on Francis' blog.

I had made HST blocks for the Silk Tie Quilt earlier, and this morning put the rest of them together into pinwheels.  One trick that I learned from doing very fussy and detailed piecing projects is to press the bejeebers out of it at every step, and TRIM.  Each pinwheel ended up a perfect 7" square.

You remember that I have issues with random and scrap right?  So I had to fuss with the pinwheels to distribute the reds, the abstracts, the paisleys and the geometrics.

I started with the blue ties and added strips.  I forgot to take pictures, but the process was simple.  I trimmed on rough edge of the tie pieces for a straight edge and sewed them to opposing sides of the pinwheel.  The width of the pieces dictated my next decision, which was to trim the outer edges to 1.5" from the sewn edge, which made my final raw-edge square 9.5".  I tried to distribute the blues across the quilt.

Next I did the blue/black/grey.  I was hoping I'd have enough ties to make the frames on all of this section blue, but it didn't work.  So I finished up with some reds. Some of the blues and reds for the frames aren't on the pinwheels b/c the wear marks on the ties kept me from being able to cut a 6" square for the HST.

Now I'm at a decision point.  I want to sash these with grey, but I'm going to have to do some careful math (not my forte) to be sure I have enough to pull it off.   I also want to make a piano-key border for the outside using the scraps from these ties plus the ones I didn't use, which include some yellow and a light pink.  I'm trying to decide b/w cutting them into even width strips, or try to match up the existing angles from the tie pieces for a slightly wonky strip.  I also need to decide if this quilt is going to be square or rectangular.  I can make it rectangular by making the stripped pieces 6" on 2 sides and maybe 2" on the others?  Think I'll have a glass of wine and wait for inspiration.