Plans, slightly disrupted

Monochrome teaser... ready for basting:

Returned from errands the other day with over 5 yards of unbleached organic cotton batting, so no excuses for not finishing up a few projects now! Cut and prewashed batting  (soak in the sink, spin in the machine, through the dryer on medium heat) for the monochrome wall-hanging, and wow, was it soft and light and scrumptious when it came out of the dryer!

Laid it all out on the hall floor yesterday afternoon during a brief window of opportunity (one cat asleep, the other outside), to start basting. Got up to the pin stage before the one cat woke up and the other came in and both plopped themselves down on the quilt sandwich and stuck their paws and noses in the pin bowl. No real mess done, although there are a couple small claw holes in one spot... nothing that won't disappear during quilting.

Had hoped to start quilting this morning, but we had some distractions overnight, in the form of the civil defense sirens going off every hour until after 3 am... hard to get a good night's sleep while under a tsunami warning! The best part was the 4.5 earthquake here while we were glued to the tube at 11pm hoping for updates! That's big enough to give the house a good shake, but nothing too serious. We get a lot of smallish rattles here, so no biggie, especially compared to what happened in Japan. Fortunately the high water has not had much affect in Hilo, although downtown is still closed. Once again I am so glad we moved up out of the tsunami zone two years ago (and this is one reason we moved!).

Anyway, all is well in my little corner of Hawaii, but I do not function well without sleep. Still feeling groggy and mentally not very sharp halfway through the larger-than-usual pot of coffee brewed up this morning. So, instead of embarking on quilting with a batting I haven't used before, which is likely to mean at least some testing and tension adjustments, I think I'll go do something mindless like sew up more bits from the scrap drawer, like these:

My "very small" scraps drawer has a lot of bits in it that are 2.5" wide but less than square. A couple days ago I used some extra minutes in the sewing room to put these strips together. No specific use in mind yet, but they will come in handy one of these days for a pillow border, or block sashing on a scrap project, or something else fun. 

Haven't started 'palooza Block 14 yet, so I might feel inspired to pick fabrics for that and get the cutting done today, too. I doubt I'll have the brainpower for much desk work today, so that means lots of time in the sewing room. (Time I really should use to clean up the kitchen, vaccuum the house, or do laundry... it could happen.)

'Palooza Mid-Way RoundUp & a Sneak Peak

We're halfway through the Block-a-Palooza quilt-along. Here are all the blocks I've made so far. Way more than the requried 8, 'cause I couldn't resist making more than one of some of them:

Half-way-point giveaway chances have been promised to all who post proof they've been diligently sewing along, so I figured it was time to find out how to make these cool photo mosaics. Turns out it's easy-peasy right here. Just link to your Flickr acct and insert your pics.

This is the core group of blocks. They each feature the little green leaf print, a different solid (or two), and at least one print not seen in previous blocks. My original plan was to use these for the "real" 'palooza quilt, and do something else with the others. But anything could happen. I may mix and match when the time comes. Chances that I will follow the prescribed 'palooza layout (as yet unknown) are slim, given that my brain thinks "instructions" are mere suggestions to be modified, embellished, or discarded at will.

In addition to quilt-along fun, I've also been working on a semi-secret project. This is for the Modern Quilt Guild Monochrome Challenge, and I won't be ready to show it off for a while yet, but here's a teeny preview. It started out with a whole lot of this, because I happen to have a lot of greens in the stash:

And now features a lot of this:

The brighter parts are all done. This weekend I'll be getting as much of the darker sections completed as I can. I'm making it up as I go along, so it's hard to say how much more work/time will go into it, but I think I'm on-track to make the March 31 deadline without too much stress.

This may be too "art-quilty" by the time it's done to appeal to a "modern" judge, but I like how it's turning out enough to finish it, regardless of how modern it does or doesn't look, or whether or not making the deadline remains feasible.