Workshop Planning and Organic Quilt

I haven't been blogging much. I've been completely absorbed in and obsessed by Pinterest.  It's a familiar pattern.  I find something new and different, and can't tear myself away.  Then I get bored.  I'm now bored with Facebook, thank god!.  Pinterest is different, I can browse images, mostly of art quilts, for days.

I'm starting to get serious about getting ready for the Nancy Crow workshop in February.  This involves buying lots and lots of fabric.  My estimate is I'll need to take at least 80 yards of solids.  I've never bought many solids, so there's lots of shopping to do.  I don't want to be limited  by my fabric choices, but at $7-8 a yard... well you do the math.  This week I ordered, and received (IN TWO DAYS!) a 16-yard Kona Cotton sampler package from Pink Chalk Fabrics.  It's beautiful!  I love to look at it.  Of course there's also the tuition, meals, and housing.  But I'm totally psyched, thrilled, and a bit scared.  I hope I have some decent work to take with me.

That leads me to wonder why I'm spending time on the Karla Alexander quilt project and not the art quilts I always think about but too rarely work on.  But it's good sewing practice, and I need that! I'm calling it "The Organic Quilt" because that's the term she used.  I didn't really get it because we are all cutting the same curvy blocks.  But everyone else did blue or purple like the example.  I did green.  And mostly earthy greens.  To match the NEW COUCH!.  Anyway, I enjoyed the class.  It was low stress and enjoyable, and the quilt's coming along well - since we cut blocks prior to class we could actually achieve something in the 6-7 hrs. we were there.  It sure goes fast!  I have all 70+ blocks cut out, sliced, shuffled and reassembled.  Now I need to trim to size, add the accents, and figure out the layout.  Karla says to do the layout before adding the accents, but my NEW DESIGN WALL isn't quite big enough for that.  I guess I'll do what I can.

I should have posted about the design wall last week.  Having a DH at home between jobs sure is a blessing! He built a removable styrofoam wall that is about 7 feet wide, and 4 feet tall.  7' because that's the space we have between light switches.  And 4' because that's a standard sheet of insulation.  I LOVE it!

Here's the finished version, with the fabric somewhat  permanently attached.

Yes, that's just blue painters tape.  But I will probably change this white flannel to a piece of batting at some point.