Design Wall Monday

In spite of my grumpy feelings this week, or maybe because of them, I set back to work on the Tumbler project.  I'd been getting somewhat bored with it.  It is very repetitive even if the fabrics themselves are greatly variant.  I put in about 13.5 hours on it over the last four days.  The individual rows are now done with the exception of determining the ends, which I may remove one tumbler of each alternating row only to re-add it to the opposite end of the other alternating rows for a zig-zag edge.  Make sense?  Sure, ok.  

As the design wall is not yet up in the in process, re-vamped craft room, I have once again taped a sampling of the rows as they currently are to my dining room wall.  The sampling is of the first 11 rows I grabbed out of the 40+ rows I made, which is more than I actually need.  I'll worry about the excess later.  Even with the rather boring process of putting this together, it's still exciting to see a quilt begin to emerge.  With scrappy quilts, it's also nice to see fabrics that I've used in other projects, as well as fabrics that maybe came from a friend or were just small pieces I picked up from a quilt shop or show outing.

Heading to Patchwork Times to see what all the other busy quilters have been up to, won't you join me? :)

Design Wall Monday

I hope everyone's having an enjoyable (U.S.) holiday weekend, and staying safe.  Frankly, I've never really understood Labor Day.  I did go over and read about it on Wikipedia.  As my son would say, "Meh".  For the most part, at this stage of the game, it seems to be not much of a celebration other than having become a marker of sorts for the end of summer, though that doesn't officially end until later in the month.  And it tends to mark the beginning of a new school year, though even that is changing in many places.  Our son's school has always started the third week of August and locally, the public schools even started a week earlier than that this year.  I suppose there are some sales abounding out there, though I haven't watched enough network TV to see if there have been ads for sales, and since I'm watching pennies far more closely these days, that's just as well.  And, while Marty may be off from 'laboring', I still have my chores so I've 'labored' plenty this weekend, while he's done his thing, which hasn't done much to better my mood.  Well, even that's a choice, so I'll get over it.

On to the purpose of this post!! It's Design Wall Monday over at Patchwork Times where we all link up to show what we're working on, and if I don't hurry up, Monday will be done and over with.

On my 'design wall TABLE' (yeah, no progress on that quilt room since I last mentioned it) is the same project I've been working on for my August NewFO, which is the beginnings of my Tumbler quilt.

I now have about half of the twosies sewn into sets of foursies, next will be eightsies, and then, well, you get the idea.  Are those even words?

Now, since I have no pattern to follow, I see I will have to do something to fix the ends of each row, when I get that far.  The tumblers need to alternate and so I need an opposing single tumbler to add to each alternating row, and then I need to determine how to handle what will become a slight zigzag when I do that.  As I put this together, I'm just reaching in and grabbing the next set and only tossing it back if the set includes the same fabric as what I'll be connecting it to, or if their isn't much contrast between the ones next to each other.  And I already see that one set on the bottom, has two that don't give much contrast.  Maybe I'll take off that tan basket-weave and use it as an end on the other side, hmmmm.
Well, back to my labors, I need to finish cleaning up the kitchen from having made dinner.

Progress and Project

The days have been busy adjusting to our new normal, which I pray is only a temporary new normal and that Marty finds re-employment soon.  He of course, has had to take time within his own heart, soul and mind to decompress from the loss of his job of 14+ years, and from steadily working for over 20 years prior to that without interruption.  Being unemployed and seeking work is an entirely new animal to him and he is having to trust the Lord in totally unfamiliar waters.  And me, I was doing pretty well with it until this past week where I found myself in the dumps for many reasons, but I AM better today and praying I stay that way.

I found / took some time for a little piece-work this week, but without my design wall I only have pictures of the parts.  It was the first time I'd sat at my machine since 8/12, so nearly two weeks without having sewn anything.  Again I'm working on a purely scrappy project.  This is my August NewFO so I'll post more on it in a few days.  For now:

The stacks of pieces I'm working from.

Two pieces placed together for first seam.

Sewn sets of two.

The quilt room has progressed to having all the walls and the ceiling completely painted.  Marty also lifted off all the old, original 1966 vintage square floor tiles that were under the carpet.  That adhesive stuff that held them in place sure is smelly! Even after several days it still stinks!  Now the hard part, deciding on what to put down.  Originally I was thinking a piece of linoleum would be just fine.  Who knew that in this part of the country linoleum is not plentiful in the stores, only a selection of a few styles which are pre-cut at that (the room is 9.5 x 10 so that could work).  But then I was sitting at a computer in the room directly beneath the quilt room as Marty moved the ladder around to paint, and it sounded awfully noisy and I started wondering about how a chair rolling around, or the sound of a sewing machine humming along might sound with little to deaden it between the floors.  Another product we looked at while at the big box hardware store was called "Allure Plank" which comes in wide variety of styles at a cost of around $2.00 per square foot which is certainly reasonable.  I liked the Antique Elm and the African Wood Dark styles in the wood-grains and the Ivory Travertine in a stone-look tile.  I really like the look of the African W.D. but it might be too dark for the small room. I suppose if we went with one of those, it would be easy enough to add a room rug if we found the sound to be too bothersome.

This morning we met with a financial counselor, something we should have done a very long time ago, to get ourselves and our assets aligned in the best possible way for now and for the future.  It's a process, and the Lord will take us through it in His way, and we can be thankful that His way is far better than any way we could arrange for ourselves with all our plans or schemes.  We may not understand it now, maybe never, but it will be good however it looks down the road.