clementine appeal

i find myself with a few more days before departure than expected. so i decided to see what else i could get ready for handwork to take with me. "citrus season" was partway through quilting when i last set it aside. this is my march "stella grande" and i decided i wanted to complete it this march, finally, if possible.

every citrus season that comes and goes, i wish i had this quilt done. the blossoms are out right now, perfuming the night air and looking so pretty by day. i always hope to get a finish photo at this time of year. but, no. not this year.

what i can do this march is get it quilted and ready to handbind.

which is what i did. there was a lot more quilting to complete than i anticipated. i thought i was in for an hour of quilting and an hour to trim & bind. it was more like 3 hours quilting. thank goodness it's done.

i still have a ton of threads to bury, but that's handwork and can wait. i stopped all the diagonal lines at the border rather than running them through the piano key strips on the ends. maybe this was a bad choice. it's done, regardless.

i have lots of orange solids to choose from for the binding. i didn't want to use any already in the quilt so i could add an extra layer of citrus color. i thought about green for the leaves, but that didn't seem right. the top is supposed to be bright, but not too bold, with some softness to it, so the orange needed to be right. i had one that was on the salmon spectrum, but there wasn't enough of it. there were one or two other bright oranges that i didn't have enough of for binding either. the deep orange i tried looked red next to the other colors. drat. i even looked at some monotone orange prints, but none were the right shade.

i was getting a little desperate to have the project complete or i wouldn't be able to take it with me and binding would have to wait til next spring. but i also didn't want to just make-do with a mediocre selection i wasn't happy with. this quilt had to be right or there was no use doing it.

finally i pulled out the whole orange stack and went through it one by one. i settled on this mid-tone moda bella solid called "clementine," in part because it had a citrus name. 

it works. photographing it has been tricky. if i bump up the lighting, the orange comes through more intense than in person, so it's hard to see accurately here. if the orange is right, the other colors aren't. but it's done and i think is a good pick. or at least good enough. i know, i know. i wasn't going to just settle. but i kind of did. if i really don't like it once i get working on it, i can always take it off. let's hope it grows on me and looks good in the end.

the binding is all machine attached to the quilt sandwich now. i was looking at our citrus trees out the window and wishing the handbinding was done, too. i couldn't resist taking the quilt out for a few photos with the blossoms even though it's not complete.

next year, when these blossoms are fruit, this quilt will have it's finish photos with the new fruit and blossoms.

maybe the companion quilt will be, too. i still have all the hsts i didn't use in the border for "citrus season" and the leftovers from the backing that i want to make into a different quilt. i was a good girl and separated the backing cutoffs immediately after trimming the sandwich and added them to the project box. all i need to do now is make a new top. i love that it's ready and waiting for me here in one spot.

tackling selvages

my next organizational tackle was this bowl of selvages. i save all selvages for some future undetermined selvage project because i think they are so cute. they get dropped in this bowl close to my cutting table. after organizing all the scraps from my backing trimmings i decided it would look better and be more effective for future use if i folded and sorted these selvages.

after folding, i sort the selvages by color into these piles. once they're all folded, i'll layer them back in the bowl in rainbow order. 

all future selvage cuttings can be quickly and easily incorporated into the system.

i found this cute piece today and it made me smile because malibu is where i'll be going very shortly. more on that at some future point.

i spent a while working on the selvages, but didn't get all the way through the bowl yet. it's not urgent and is something i can come back to later. but any progress like this feels great!

 the room is looking so much better.

a clean room is much more inviting for working in.

it still has a lot going on, so much visual clutter because of all the open shelving. this is good for locating what i need easily, but doesn't make for a clean, calm-looking environment. 

i'm just glad to have it and to have it getting cleaner and clearer all the time.