100 days of epp

day 1, first piece

 i was reading about juliann's 100 days of circles project and as i was commenting to her that i've never done a 100 days project because we travel so often, i thought about my epp project that is portable and sadly in need of some progress. (i've definitely travelled with it before: alaska, san diego, yosemite, the south, scotland, switzerland, italy.) what would it look like if i sewed even just one piece on every day for 100 days? that would be a lot of pieces put together and certainly farther along than i am now.

so i pulled out my project, which has been living on the floor next to my bed since i pulled it out in december so i can think about it, and added a triangle. then i went ahead and added a square, too, because i was in no particular hurry to get to anything else immediately.

as i stitched, i thought about what pieces are needed next, which is important to know so i don't join the wrong things together and make more work for myself or, heaven forbid!, need to unpick some handstitching. 

i spread the pieces i have out on the floor to decide just what it is i want to do with this mess and what would be the quickest configuration to complete.

the two sets of three interconnected cogs i already made are really throwing a wrench into things. they don't easily fit into the simplest layouts i could do. i moved pieces around for quite a while to see what was possible and what would be required for different layouts. my brain started hurting and i was getting bored. but i kept at it for a while. after all: "little quilty chores equal big quilty finishes."

i used two colors of bright squares (the pink and turquoise) to easily see what squares would be added to current joined pieces, which is why there are so many of them in this photo. this large slab is one piece of a five-interlocking-rows layout i was considering. it feels like so much work still to go!

finally, i have landed on making a row of 15 hexes across and another interconnected row below it. this will start with one of the three wheel cogs, then require an X connecting piece between seven more already completed wheels and a hexagon and half a wheel (three squares, two triangles) in the next row down. that's where i'm starting and i'll see how i feel about what's left after this is complete.

something i'm still very much undecided about is what to do with all the unbasted pieces i cut for this project! each little stack has something like 60 pieces in it, which means i easily have enough to do 60 more wheels. that fit into my original plan just fine, but it's way more than i need now! they aren't precisely cut to exact measurements because they were for basting, not machine piecing, otherwise i could just use them in some other machine-pieced configuration. honestly, it's such a small bit of fabric but it's giving me a lot of angst about not using it!

i will need to dip into these piles to round out the additional pieces i need because i only have about 75 basted squares left and less of the triangles. i'm going to have to be more aware of what pieces i'm selecting now, laying out what i want to go where before i start joining them. this won't be the carefree "pick up a piece and add it randomly each day" approach that i was anticipating. but it will move the project forward.

oh, my 'lanta! just look what's in this other box i found in my sewing room. it's, like, two jelly rolls and more of strips. plus more squares and a whole mess of black-and-white squares for the hexagons (which i will actually need). i may be making another quilt entirely just from these strips or making a striped backing. i'd go right for the backing idea except i still have those large cuts of yardage i already set aside for backing. i really should have done some more maths before i got started on this project! me and my boundless enthusiasm for how much i was going to want to handstitch. yikes!

feeling lazy on day 2 and i laid out the first set of pieces to be joined while still in my pjs, bed unmade.

my pieces to join for the next few days

originally, part of the joy of this project was picking the pieces for the individual wheels and completing those. however, if i want to join them together, i'm going to have change my approach.

unfortunately, i realized when shifting all the parts around that the two pieces i added on day 1 are in the wrong place to be useful as a connecting X! haha, already off to a bad start. but that's not anything i'm not used to around here. i'll just adjust and figure out where to work it in as i go.

i'm currently about a week in and have completed that lower middle hex in the above photo. day 3 was d4's birthday and i clean forgot this was a thing, so i had to make up for it/start over on day 4. but i'm getting at least one side of a piece stitched each day now. mornings are best, but i did do one piece at the end of day 5 so as not to miss.

maybe, just maybe, this project will go somewhere this year after all!