Paper piecing and driving...

...not at the same time.

I was absent last Monday.  I drove to see my family in Louisiana.  My Mom's been sick and in the hospital for a few days and it was a good time to go check up on them and see how things were going.  I cooked and visited and tried to help her get settled.  It was a good visit and I got to visit with most of my immediate family.  I took a different route there and another different route back.  I enjoyed that and got to see different parts of the state of Texas; some lovely, some sad, but of course hardly any city shows it's best face to the highway, so no telling what it would have been if I'd had time to explore. 

When I got home, it was work, work, work.  We trimmed the tree limbs off the roof line on Saturday and I could hardly move yesterday from the bending over.  Yesterday, I worked on the grill.  The summer was not good to it.  I bought a new grill (more expensive than I've ever bought) and had it delivered a couple weeks ago.  While I was gone last weekend, Rob started to put it together and found it was damaged in shipping.  So, we returned that and instead of new, I bought parts (for about 1/7 the price) and spent yesterday cleaning and putting on the new parts.  I grilled a piece of chicken last night and it worked perfectly (as good as that new grill would have worked, anyway).

But, my fun time was spent working on the arc quilt.  The pattern is called Illuminata and it's by quilt mavens Deb Karasik and Janet Mednick.  I got the last 12 blocks assembled and started playing with layout. 

This was the first, random layout.  I was just putting the blocks on the floor in the correct positions, no plan.  The corners will be plain black squares...but I admit I'm thinking of making arcs to fill them, so I'm not cutting squares for now. 

I like this layout.  But, it lacks something.

Rob suggested I match the colors in the small arcs so they look like the beginning of the large arc.  That worked well in most places, but I didn't make the arcs with this in mind, so there were some issues with the dark/light . 

So, then I tried matching dark/light and instead of matching colors where the arcs come together, I matched warm colors to warm and cool colors to cool.  And, I think that's the one.  It has flow and movement and doesn't look matchy-matchy.  The only thing I might change is a couple of the comma shaped pieces are not as bright as the others and I might replace those.  That would be easier than it looks and it would keep that one piece from disappearing. 

Next are the borders, and they're 27 inches of those paper pieced points.  But, for them, I'm going to be more planful.  I'm going to lay the fabrics out for the whole strip at one time.  I'm going to be making two strips in tandem.  The corners have a match point where there is a large and a small arc, much like the blocks, so I'm going to make both 27" sections at the same time.  And, I'm going to be planful of color temperature and shading. 

So, lots of paper piecing still in my future.  I was sorting scraps yesterday and it hardly feels like I've used any.  There were two boxes full when I started and there are two boxes full right now.  I swear, they're multiplying in the box. 

Everybody have a great week!  I think it's going to be a busy one for me.  I finally feel like I've found my footing on the new job and can relax a little.  There's not much that's different, except the way they think of things.  All tree, no forest.  I've been trained to work on the forest and find a way to catch that tree and all the trees like it and take the same action on all of them.  It's okay.  I'll bring my bosses around to the right way of thinking soon enough. 

Lane