Design Wall Monday - May 22

 Is your design wall full of fun things this week?
https://smallquiltsanddollquilts.blogspot.com/

Currently my "Design Ironing Board" is weighed down with the fabric for the upcoming Alaskan cruise project.  Our homework involved cutting the strips needed from each of the colors, then cutting those into specific sizes for the templates or foundation piecing.  Lots of time is involved.  And let me say, these are not colors that I would normally use. Plus they are all solids, and my brain really wants some print in that stack.  But I'm excited about the cruise, and the quilting with friends I haven't seen for awhile.

The instructions suggested making 1 sample foundation pieced section before cutting the strips into the smaller pieces.  That allows us to make slight adjustments.  My first section worked fine, so I went ahead and cut all of the pieces used in this particular foundation unit.

I am organizing the units along with the foundation papers in Ziplock bags with labels to identify them.  There will be 3 of these gallon bags holding the 3 separate paper piecing sections and all of the parts for them.   

The second one is done too.  For the third paper pieced section I have the strips cut and a sample section sewn.  Today hopefully I'll get the strips subcut into the parts and packaged up.  Then I can focus on the plastic templates for the curved parts that will attach to these paper pieced units.  

More cutting is on the agenda for this week as I'm prepping binding for a couple of UFO quilts currently in the hands of a quilter.  She checked on her list, and my Christmas Saturday Sampler should be done in the next week or so, followed by Country Bunnies.  I'm excited to get these UFOs back to bind.  I think I have enough of that red for binding. 

This will be the final week of orange for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, so I dug into the small box full of parts cut already for the Small Hearts blocks.  I found 5 sets to finish out orange.  The bin of charm squares yielded some good options for more Windmill blocks.  There are 5 sets cut and ready to sew in the other small box.  Not all are orange however, but that's OK.  These blocks will make some good distraction when I get tired of cutting things this week. 

I've been making a list of projects I've been working on lately, and notice that once again there are about 10 different things in various stages all happening at once.  That is a definite sign of lack of FOCUS!!  Yikes!!!  Can I actually finish a couple of small things this week?  There are 3 table runners, 1 pillowcase kit, and 2 doll quilts in that stack - and the stack of Rainbow Connection blocks pinned into rows.  

This will be a short week for sewing as I will have 2 grandkids here on Friday, and doctor appointments on Thursday.  So my main goal for this week is to reduce (not eliminate) the stack of projects currently gracing the end of my ironing board - without starting anything NEW even though I really really want to play with something new.