Oh My .. that's not a ½ yard, that's an fq :\

I decided to start on the my smallest yardage for the foreground colour for the underground rr sections .. good thing, as when i went to open it up, i discovered that it wasn't a ½ yard, but an FQ - oh my .. but i was pretty lucky as I had another FQ that went well with this one .. good thing!!!!

I went over my math again and to see how much I could get out of the FQs .. I had an idea and thought that I would try to make it fit as best I could .. I wanted to have the middle sections of the blocks all the same fabric and then the outer 4 patches could be the other FQ .. It worked, BUT, I would be about 6 blocks short .. which actually worked out as I managed to get a pretty cool design element in with the other FQ. I had the second FQ be the outside 4 patches and also the end of one of the arms in my 'circle'.

I'm being VERY careful as I sew these pieces together . normally i would take all the HST pieces and just zip along with them .. but I'm doing them block by block right now .. I'm 'numb' enough at this point that I am being SUPER careful, and I really want to preserve this design element ..

I'm back to piecing this part together .. I just wanted to take a break and share this with you ..

Oh - I KNEW that wasn't a ½ yard .. just blocked it out for some reason .. but I think this is going to look just GREAT!!!!

This poor quilt ...

I've changed my mind again .. this poor quilt .. I could almost feel sorry for it .. but at this point, it's not feeling *MY* pain and frustration ... ;)

I started to look at the layout pic I did again this am when I finally got up .. and i realized that the sections with the underground railroad that I'm having such kittens over, won't even been seen when it's on the bed for crying out loud (!!) You'll see part of it .. but not all .. I'm like .. "Grace, you're a twit!!" .. so I shifted the sections over towards the big Ohio Star all around and rather liked that .. it did disrupt the sister's hearth variation I drew up, but at least it would be visible .. and of course I've not measured our bed .. every time I go to think of it .. Reg's sleeping in it .. he might not appreciate a tape measure across his nose ;)

Then I looked at it again and the flow seemed to stop abruptly, I put the split background underground RR back in the corners. I moved the grouping of 4 Double X for the same reason the underground RR got moved .. so that pushed my simplex stars and sisters off to the edges, where most of them won't be seen again .. (@@) (<- rolling eyes .. ). Reg LIKED that sisters hearth .. that is the ONLY block he picked .. so i took the simplex star out of the edge and center blocks in the big Ohio and put them in there ..

I do like this layout - (heh .. I liked the last one too :S) .. but with the shifting around, I have the 'big' blocks in the middle and then framed by the smaller blocks .. which means I'll be able to get away with a more simplistic border as well, since I will already have the middle of the quilt framed ..

I'll let this gel in my mind again .. I'm off to work on the math for this - I might even start cutting .. heh .. I had better cut soon before I change my mind again ..

trees, yard(age), I'm whacked!!

Good news on my quilt math :D :D :D .. I'm right - thankyou everyone that downloaded my pdf file and checked it for me ... it has been suggested to change the usable width to 40" as the newer fabrics aren't as wide anymore .. what's up with that .. they increase the price per yard and give us less .. BAH! .. A lot of my yardage is older, but that is great advise and I will measure my widths just to be sure.

With checking my math, I've realized that I don't have enough yardage to do the background all the same .. what I can do is have the inner blocks one background and the outer blocks a different one .. I do have more than enough for that .. And I think that it would look great too and I have enough to do the backgrounds all the same this way. For the inner ring and the Underground Railroad ring, I really want these backgrounds to be the same. The foregrounds I've already decided will be scrappy - quilts back then were made from scraps of this and that, so this would be more to the period - i have some nice yellows and reds that would be perfect for the foreground for this ring .. and ½ yards of each colour, so getting 4 - 5 blocks per piece won't be an isssue ..

I am bloody tired today! I woke up to my dad knocking on the door (the man has a cell phone, he could call (@@)), and he asked for my help with shopping for a tree for him and doing the plot at my mum's gravesite ... we spent all day it seems running around going here and there .. didn't get the plot done .. needs to have some maintenace done on the ground there first, but we did buy a hanging basket to hang on the shepards crook he had already bought at the gravesite, so that was really good .. and it looks really great too .. I think that mum will like it.

We ended up coming back here to get the dog and then go to his place to cook supper. We made a beef stir fry together that was pretty good!! .. We were missing a few things that makes it just perfect like fresh ginger and broccoli, but we made up for it in other ways with garlic and lots of other veggies ..

I got home and finally got a chance to beat the snot out of the weeds that have been growing in my backyard. In mid to late April, we dug up, leveled, raked, rolled and planted grass seed in our back yard. Well the grass was finally long enough for me to cut it. I wanted to do this earlier this week, but Monday I was busy with other stuff and it's rained just about every day since then. Well I could have done it yesterday, but Kyle broke my weedwhacker so I needed to fix it before I could use it. Didn't bother .. got a new Black & decker one today at Home Depot for like $15 :) .. so it was late when I got home, but nice and cool. Took me bout 30 - 45 mins to whack thru all the weeds in the back .. they were half my height and I'm a shorty ;) .. then to cut the grass. I went over it twice and am pretty pleased with the result. I'm happy enough with it that I finally let Orion out the backyard for the first time since we did all that work :) .. she was pretty happy too. But now I'm pretty bloody whacked .. being outdoors today in nurseries and at home depot then at the gravesite twice, THEN doing my backyard .. Yup I'm tired. I'll have Kyle rake up the weeds and grass tomorrow, then toss some more seed out there and we should be good to go .. all I need to do out there now is to hang my box planters, lay some stone next to the deck and move the old bbq off the deck - just basically rearrange some stuff.