Back to Circles

I've been working, or trying to, on Upward Tick, really I have. Even though I have a drawing, and two backgrounds quilted, and fabric pulled, I was struggling to move to the next step. My brain was chaos about those circles I planned to add. It went back and forth about how best to approach it, then started panicking a bit about which fabrics to cut which size, and...  I do NOT work well without a plan, as some people seem to do. I felt much better once I settled on making templates from freezer paper, using my enlarged sketch as a guide and various round objects to trace around. Then, as is my way, I numbered my master and transferred the numbers onto the template. There! I could heave a sigh of relief as the chaos subsided.

But still, I could not bring myself to start cutting. Why? And why am I showing you this picture of stereo speakers disemboweled? Well, they have been part of the problem, a side project that has taken up more than a quarter of my work space for over a month. I didn't have a better place to work on them and didn't expect this diy repair of the foam surround to take so long. I'd do a little at a time, as time and health allowed, but lost my nerve when I got to the gluing part. Lot's of warnings about well-ventilated workspace and getting placement right the first time as the glue takes quite quickly. I should not have been so intimidated. The other day, I screwed up my courage, moved the speakers into the bathroom I've been using for my painting and stamping, turned on the fan and opened the glue. Huh. I could hardly smell it; that first printing ink I tried was ten times smellier. And since these are small speakers, it wasn't that big of a deal to center the foam surround properly. Within 24 hrs, the speakers were back together and hooked up, sounding like new. Now, there's a boost for my confidence!

AND I had a major portion of my workspace back. Seriously, I had backed myself into an open area pretty much the size of what you see in that first picture. Now I could spread out and work! I'm experimenting with two versions, the top one using hand dyed cottons and the bottom one using sheers. I think I'm like the sheers better, but both need more work, probably some editing. It's harder to tell about arrangement with the hand-dyed circles as I decided I'd hand applique them down, so what you see is bigger than they will be once the seam allowance is turned under. The colors are an effort to integrate the background with colors from the photo border. There's some of that going on in the sheer one too. I think it's working (better than the photo would suggest), but if not, I will have to find something else to frame them. I'm taking them to my art group tomorrow for a second opinion.

I wasn't thinking about it when I devoted the better part of yesterday and some of today to this, but Saturday was National Quilting Day. I may not have revved up my machine, but I did have a lot of fun with fabric. How did you celebrate the day?