Optic Strings and Conundrum - Week Five Recap and More

These are Week Five's seven blocks for Conundrum Optic Strings.

(click HERE for the introductory post)

Blocks 1-4 up close.

Blocks 5-7 and the rescued triangles 

ready to make 14 more geese blocks.

(35 string blocks made / 45 yet to go)

As some of you can tell, I have been on a mission

to move several stalled projects forward this month.

Lagniappe now has all of its HSTs sewn.

Next I need to trim the corners and

pin the HSTs into pairs for flying geese blocks.

For the Birds - I simplified my layout,

trimmed the blocks to the same size,

and counted/sorted 1.5" (finished) HSTS

to use for sashing and borders.

(those will be leader-ender sewing)

Birds free pieced using Lynne's Liberated Birds tutorial.

And because there were still more HST parts leftover,

(originally cut for Mosaic which morphed into this little quilt) 

I labeled their project box Pinwheel Economy blocks.

The yardage on the right (from the stash)

will become a scrappy back.

I'll decide later what to use to surround the scrappy pinwheels.

And so yet another "give a mouse a cookie" 

aka Squirrel project begins.

Maybe someday I'll learn not to over-cut

when starting a new scrappy project.

Right . . .

Inspi(red) took a big step forward this week.

All twenty blocks are pieced and the 

last three 1.5" inserts have been thrown away.

(this one is a squirrel project

designed to use those skinny insert strip

from another AHIQ project - now named Luminous)

The clipped blocks now join five other tops

that are waiting to be webbed together.

One day soon . . .

The stacks of snowball blocks from last week

now have their corner triangles pinned in place

ready to be sewn leader-ender style in the coming weeks.

And Sea of HSTs even back out to play.

I've started sewing the twelve 16-patch blocks 

together and hope to get the scrappy sashing strips cut

so this one can be laid out and sewn together

in the coming week(s).

And, of course, there were leftover HSTs 

beyond those needed for the 16-patch blocks (sigh) . . . 

What's a scrappy quilter to do but sew them into pairs

(leader-ender style)

to be used as insert strips for the quilt's scrappy back.

Sadly, I also sent another comfort quilt this week -

this time to another former law firm co-worker 

whose husband has metastasized cancer.

(Meet Me in the Rose Garden was made 

using Bonnie Hunter's Sister's Choice design.)

* * *

I'll be back again next Monday with another recap post.

(my goal is to resume posting 

2-3 times a week starting August first)

Quiltdivajulie

Mercyful One (aka Comfortable) - the Flimsy

And we have a flimsy - 43" wide x 59" long.

I honestly don't remember if I've posted about 

this one before so I'll tell you the story here instead.

In March 2018 I decided to tackle a large box of 2.5" strips

that had been cut from this, that, and another fabric.

Among other planned projects, I cut pairs of rectangles 

to make a scrappy Two by Four comfort quilt top.

And for some abandoned reason, 

I cut the low volume strips

into 2.5" squares - perhaps for 

a four patch project of some sort.

Nothing happened to either set until earlier this year

when inspiration finally struck.

(whatever those earlier projects had been,

I'd fallen out of love and needed a new approach)

I stitched a low volume square 

to the end of each rectangle,

keeping the pairs together.

I then flipped one set end-for-end 

and stitched it to the other set

as you can see in the photos.

Most of the sets are in matched pairs

but many are not - just to keep things interesting.

The final layout came from my need to create 

some semblance of order in the colorful chaos.

Arranging the 4" x 6" blocks into

columns loosely organized by color

calmed the chaos just enough

without killing off the scrappy vibe.

* * *

Typically the Mercyful quilts are a bit larger

but I'm not going to enlarge this one.

My mother was barely 5' tall and just over 100 lbs.

by the time she entered palliative care.

My mother-in-law was 4' 7" and about 95 lbs.

when she entered palliative care.

So my hope is that this quilt will 

 find its home with a similarly

diminutive end-of-life patient.

It will be a few weeks before the top gets quilted,

but this one will be off to Bernie sooner instead of later.

Update added later - 

Comfortable will not become a comfort quilt after all.

It is going to stay right here with us.

Quiltdivajulie

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"No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted."
Aesop