Thursday, January 6, 2011

Orange Crush Revisted

This will be a test to see if I remember how to do a blog entry and post pictures to it. Yes, again it has been a long time, but I may be back on the blogging track now. Since my last entry in May our family had our annual vacation in Hatteras, shortened by my mother-in-law's death, my hubby retired, and we moved to GA from VA, attended about 20 Braves games, had a mini-family reunion at our house in September, had overnight guests 3 times, went to Seattle to visit our youngest daughter, took a cruise before Thanksgiving, had various combinations of our kids at our house several times (including all 3 families with the 5 grandkids the day after Christmas), attended a 3+ day quilting retreat in north GA, cheered our nephew in several high school wrestling matches, and went to Johnson City, TN where my mom lives 4 times, including last week for the graveside service of one of her sisters.

I did very little in my roomy and bright quilting room until after the cruise, but since then I have been busier in there. More about those projects in the next few posts. I have decided that rather than make this a longer post by including those projects, I'll just start with where I am today and work backward, and forward, later.

I started the Orange Crush mystery with Bonnie Hunter over 2 1/2 years ago. It calls for 2 main blocks, and got enough of those done to make a decent-sized lap quilt, and had started to assemble them. Here is the original plan for my layout. Layout for the Orange Crush Quilt Before getting very far along with putting the rows together I saw a different layout that I have since decided I like better. I hadn't done any more on this quilt until today. I am planning to attend a workshop next month that Bonnie Hunter is giving for the guild in VA that I was a member of, and I want to be able to take this quilt top sewn together. So today I laid out the new arrangement and took apart some of the diagonal strips that I had already sewn together in the old arrangement. Here is what I have laid out so far. Orange Crush revisited Yes, my "design wall" is still the floor. I think I know where I want to put it, and I have something that I think will work for it, I just haven't gotten it all together yet. More on that later too. I've added some more blocks to this layout since I took the picture earlier tonight, and now only need to make 12 more orange blocks and 1 more green one to make it 7 x 9. I think the border will be a narrow strip of the black, then a wider strip of the green with some of the leftover pieces in the middle of each side like I had laid out in the first picture. I'm a ways from that though. First I need to make the rest of the blocks and re-arrange what I have a bit so that I don't have like fabrics touching and so that the light blue centers of the orange blocks are more randomly placed. So now I have a project I am excited about again - and a deadline for completion of it. Sometimes that is just what we need to get going again, isn't it?

3 comments:

Cheryl Willis said...

sounds like you have been way busy! Your Orange Crush is looking great. Both layouts are nice. Have you looked to see the new mystery everyone is working on?
cw

Judi said...

Yeah she's back! Have fun.

Vesuviusmama said...

Oh, I like that new layout better, too! And like you, I am trying to finish a Bonnie Hunter pattern - Virginia Bound - before the workshop in February. Deadlines are definitely a plus for me! So glad to see you posting again! Keep it up! I miss you! It would have been so fun to have you and Dave there when they beat #10 ranked EMU last night!