Formerly known as...

I admit defeat. My first quilting defeat, that is. I was really excited about my Triple Irish Chain wedding quilt for two close friends that are getting married this summer. And then I started laying out my fabric and it all crashed down on me. :o(   I believe that I DID pick out nice colors which I believe are close to their wedding colors/favorite colors.

But the truth is I DIDN'T pick the correct shades (tones?) of said colors for Irish Chain layouts. I wanted to do scrappy but keep the colors in the same place i.e. yellow always in the center followed by green then blue. But there's not real darker color than the rest so it all just jumbles together and does not look like I wanted it to.

 First try: yellows in the center.

Second try: blues in the center.

Of course I realized this AFTER cutting all my fabric into 2 1/2" strips. What to do? I thought maybe there was enough difference between the yellow and green to scale it down to a Double Irish Chain. No go. :o(

My scraps are just too different and at the same time, not different enough. Who does that?! Maybe I psyched myself out by not being able to see it all in the grand scheme of things. I know that I didn't like a single block, though, and that was enough for me. I thought about doing a rail fence with all 3 colors blending into each other, but again the colors are not conducive to that layout.

So after over thinking it all twice and out loud to my very patient husband, I decided to go for a rail fence stair step type of quilt inspired by Red Pepper Quilts. I'm going to make mine bigger with 3 strips of color and a wider white so I believe it will be a 10.5" square.

I am so over the hill with this layout now! Well, as long as I don't start over thinking things again. I sure hope not because I started piecing my strips yesterday. I'd like to do a thin white border followed by a scrappy 2 1/2" square border, probably doing a blue, yellow, green pattern again. So I've renamed the quilt (for now) as the D&B quilt. It's way shorter than "Triple Irish Chain Quilt". :o)

In other news, I managed to piece two Swoon blocks this week. It felt awesome to get back into it. I may try to piece the rest two at a time as well, just so that it doesn't take me all year to finish it. I'm not too thrilled about the over all colors. I probably should have focused more on the colors of the whole quilt rather than the theme. Oh well. It's just going on my bed. Nobody will ever know. Unless they read this blog. OR look at my flickr photostream. :o)

Make an excuse Thursday

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Next 10 blocks., a photo by VioEleven11 on Flickr.

Ugh. Shopping for fabric and taking a picture is all I've managed to do this week. I had a fun weekend full of girlfriends and wine, but not much on the quilting front. Side note: I bought 5 block pairings that's I'm pretty happy with. My LQS has having a moving sale so i couldn't only have them cut fat quarters, so I had to get a half yard of each. :o( Not too bad since I can just swap my prints and solids for colors 1 and 2, but it kind of messes with my original idea of not repeating fabrics. I'm happy with each color combination, I just don't know that they'll be very cohesive once they're all together. I only need one more block pair and I'll have all 16 for my King Swoon. Back to our regularly scheduled program: Oh, I also marked my Swoon squares and pinned them together. So I did 2 things. BUT I have not dusted off the sewing machine all week. Time to make an excuse!

My husband has been out of work since July. It sucks. I've gotten used to him being home when I came home and that's all done for the next 8 months. He's gone back to school! Good news, of course, but sucky for me! No more pampering, leading the "good life" coming home to my husband who's a great father and has definitely done more than his share of housework lately. His class is from 6 to 10 pm, which of course is prime bed time for my reluctant 3 and 5 year olds. Boo! I took him for granted and forgot how hard it is to be by myself with my children. Weird, isn't it?

Excuse number two: full work week! Overtime! Stinkin' work. I had my first 5 day work week last week after Christmas and all that, but the combination of excuse 1 and excuse 2 sucks. Lucky my kids have gotten home cooked meals so far. I can't promise anything for tomorrow, though. :o)

Excuse #3 is my book club's fault. We finally met this last weekend to discuss our last book. I finished Moloka'i over the New Year weekend, and I didn't want to start the next one before meeting for fear of both stories mushing up in my brain. Mind you 1898 Hawaii and 1942 France have nothing in common, but that's why it's called excuses, right? :o) Sarah's Key is actually a pretty fast read and because it is, it just makes me want to read it even more! I should be done soon, so there's hope for this week yet!

I have two blocks cut, marked and pinned so even if I manage to not get any Swooning finished this week, I think a two-for-one could put me back in the game. I do love seeing what everybody is coming up with on the Swoon -Along flickr page.

Wish me luck!