Trichromatic

Does it seem like I’ve fallen off the face of the earth? Because I rather feel as though I have.  In the last month, I’ve been attempting to potty train both of my 2.5-year-olds (with some substantial success, and some substantial bumps in the road, as these things go), having some running setbacks in the lead-up to my very first race (5K next Saturday), and generally felt like I have lost my mind and my motivation.

But I have been sewing. A lot of progress, and as of this weekend, I finally feel like I’m caught up and can breathe. The big finish to cross off the list is my swap quilt for DQS8.  For whatever reason, I had a really hard time settling on a design for this quilt. I considered what felt like a million different things. My swap partner has different likes than I do, as well as some fairly specific preferences for color. I’m not sure why, but it just really stumped me.  Eventually, though, I hit on string blocks and I’m really glad that I did.

My partner specifically requested black and red, with the possibility of some other colors, so I just ran with it.  I’m of two minds on the string blocks. I think they’re cool, a nice way to use up scraps, and all of that. But they’re kind of a pain to put together, I think especially when I was trying to do them all at once. Maybe I’d feel differently if I was doing at as a long-term scrapbusting project, but as this was all at once, it felt a little tedious.  That said, I liked the way they came together, and I actually really loved trimming them down after they were all done.  It went from this messy, chaotic pile of scraps, to a nice, neat stack of perfect blocks.  After that, of course, it was all super fast.

As I often do, I polled Twitter for suggestions on how to quilt it.  A friend suggested concentric squares and I immediately knew that was the right way to go. I marked them all out with washable pen, and they’re about an inch in between each one.

Anyways, I’m happy with it. I enjoyed making it, even if I had a bit of a hard time finding my way there. And I’m hoping I struck a good note between trying to make something that my partner would like, while also making something that I feel good about.  I know the latter is true, and the package is headed out in the mail in the morning, so hopefully the former will be true as well!

Not sure if I’ll do the next round of the swap. I like it, but I think I was a bit over-committed this past month or so, and should consider saying “no,” even though it sounds like fun…