Wednesday, March 4, 2015

WIP Wednesday: Progress!

Piecing Station:
I've finished the last 20 blocks for Picnic in Serenade and am ready to sew the rows together for the bottom 2 Sunny Lanes blocks which I'm using as leader/enders. I've given Picnic in Serenade the Value Treatment and will leave it on my wall while I'm busy quilting for the rest of the week to contemplate any changes.
While I love this fabric line it has taught me a good lesson. In this 40 strip jelly roll there are only 19 unique fabrics which means that 2 fabrics are tripled and the rest are doubled. Which adds up to make this particular line not ideal for this particular pattern - it's still a pretty top but I would prefer more variety. Lesson learned: check the repeats and THEN choose a pattern.

Oh - and orange might be more of an "attention hogging" color than yellow!

Sandwich Shop:
Quilting Station:
I decided to use the back side of my whiteboard easel to try out a Kanban board inspired by THIS post from last years Finish Along at The Littlest Thistle. I printed out my active projects onto some 3" Post It Notes I had handy - orange represents 2015 WIPs, aqua is for UFO Donation quilts and purple means UFO Keepers. A very quick project to set up and it has a nice little payoff when I get to move a square.

Just another way to try and keep things moving! I'm linking up to WIP Wednesday@Freshly Pieced.

10 comments:

  1. Very cool way of organizing your current projects. My boyfriend uses Kanban for his work and loves it!

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  2. your board is pretty cool! it must feel so good to move squares around on it. goodness, you have a lot of projects going!

    i know exactly what you mean about checking the repeats in a jelly roll before selecting a pattern. same thing happened to me recently. i've found it helpful to just add in a few coordinating bits from my stash adn maybe pull a few pieces i didn't like as much from the precuts. this adds variety and gives it a little less of a pre-packaged look when the quilt is finished. i do love precuts, but i like the look even better when i mix in a few other fabrics. your value test looks pretty darn good!
    happy sewing this week.

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  3. I had a similar discovery with the last jelly roll quilt I made - not enough unique fabrics. It sure made for a more difficult layout while avoiding fabrics too close together. The printed color-coded sticky notes - very clever! I used to do that when I was still in the classroom and had forgotten all about that strategy for tracking things. Thanks for the reminder! I may be doing that for my work "to do" list in the near future.

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  4. Love the wip on your design wall - and I *love* the orange!!! Having lots of things on the go is a great way to keep things interesting and your way of tracking progress looks great.

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  5. Your quilt looks amazing and I love the one next to it on your design wall too :)

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  6. You are definitely on a roll! I LOVE the organization!!!

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  7. I always love your organization ideas and your progress. :)

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  8. Your quilts look wonderful dear Deb!
    Perfect organization!

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  9. Thanks for all the tips in this post! They will be very helpful in the future. (And thanks for the photos of Elsa in the last post. She's such a cutie.)

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