WHERE IS IT????

I am frustrated. The socks were calling to me once I got both to the heel-turning part so I've been spending extra time on them since I remember having trouble with it on the first socks I knit with this pattern. It's going better but really demands my attention. It's in two parts knit a little differently from each other, the first part being pretty easy and straight forward. The second part not so much and I was ready for a break. It occurred to me that I should dig out that circle of batik I'll be using as a moon with the split nine-patch blocks so that the fabrics surrounding it are right. I thought I'd run across it not that long ago, and started with the top bin on a stack of three in the closet. It's actually made for storing Christmas wreaths but because of its large squarish size, I bought it to store the Baltimore Album blocks I'd made. Nope, not there, but instead I was faced with some of my earliest forays into sun printing, surface design and art quilting. Talk about leftovers! So many bits and pieces to not toss, so many ideas especially for working with leaves. And a substantial amount of that Roberta Horton plaid - I have no idea why I stored it here.

On to the next bin. It had a note on top telling me what projects were in it. Things I'd forgotten about, like a small top made from feedsack reproduction prints and drunkard's path blocks, and not one but three mariner compass blocks. I was planning on looking for the yellow and black one to finish up as a wallhanging for my step-great niece who is a bit of a world traveler and happened to snag an Irishman when she was in New Zealand. They recently got married and I hadn't done anything about a wedding gift yet, thought this would be perfect. But those other two - I recognize most of the fabric from the shop I taught at in Wisconsin so they must have been samples for a class. I knew I had one Mystery Quilt set of directions with fabric set aside in one of the bins and I found it here, along with two others - really??? Other projects too in there. I have no need to find anything new to work on - I have plenty in these bins.

Things I was dabbling in shortly after arriving in Idaho 2006

The third bin is a truly big and deep one, and I knew some of what was in there, but wasn't expecting this on the top along with pieces of hand-dyed fabric. I must have had a plan for setting the hand-dyes aside but I'm not sure what. I do know what I'd planned to do with the sharply angled triangles and why I set it aside. I think I'm more experienced now and could work with these with success now. To be honest, it's almost depressing to see here and in the other bins these early attempts and ideas that I've abandoned, a little because of out of sight, out of mind.

But still no batik circle of fabric. However, the next layer included something else I was planning on finding to work on. In fact, as I was considering what to choose for my return to more quilting, it was between this Stack n Whack top ready to quilt and the split nine-patch art quilt. It's made from leftovers of the St. Hilary's Star quilt for which I had far more fabric than I needed. I put it aside because I was dithering about adding a border of an African fabric that I'd picked up thinking it would go, but once home with it, I wasn't sure. It's been on my mind to finish it up for a very long time so I can drape it over the trunk in my livingroom. I think that border idea is long gone. May use that African fabric as a backing though. A ton of fabric and ideas lie between this top and the final layers of fabric.

Luckily, some of this is labeled as to what it is intended for. I'm remembering now about the full size quilt I wanted to make using my signature Idaho Beauty block and, what else, teal fabric for the stars, white for the background. I actually do not think I'm interested in making that anymore. I did know I had the beginnings of a "Simply Seminole" quilt in this bin, one where you make the strips, then sew them together quilt-as-you-go style, something else I taught and this was my second sample. I need many more Seminole-pieced strips to finish this up and again, not entirely sure I'm interested in doing that. I also knew that the background and backing fabric for another quilt I've been wanting to make for at least the last three Christmases, one with pinwheels of plaids and Christmas prints, should be in this bin, and there it was at the very bottom. And whew! I'd been looking for the pattern in my binder files to no avail which worried me, but no, I'd put it with this fabric. I still really want to make this one. 

So I am at a loss as to where that circle of batik is hiding. There is one more place I could check, which means unloading my cache of framed art quilts and framing materials which reside on top of a foot locker also filled with larger lengths of fabrics, some of which are batiks. It's such a job getting into that trunk, and now with the finds I have made, perhaps I should just get started on something else. Certainly wasn't a waste of time going through the bins where I found plenty of great project to choose from. Maybe I'll finish turning those heels first . . .