Thank You, One and All!

Thanks for the suggestions for dealing with my action papers. Every last one of them is a good and workable solution. I think we even have a clear acrylic wall pocket around here somewhere that I could use (I used to use it, in fact, but had forgotten that we had it). I'm going to wait just a bit before I install anything though because I want to also raise the monitor off the surface of the desk a little and that may affect where or what I can put on the wall over the desk. There's still a pile of stuff I need to go through but I moved some books and things around the other day and the improvement is noticeable:





Once I got the most essential items dealt with I had to do something creative and fun. Remember those log cabin blocks I'd pulled out? There was another block in that pile that I didn't share with you then:



I had it off to one side on the design wall and was contemplating using it as a starting point for my August journal quilt. Do you see the little purple house in the center of the block? Earlier in the week I built a composition around it, with the house block dead center. At the time I was content with it but I didn't have time to sew it together. The more I looked at it over the course of the next few days the less happy I was with it. Finally I took the house block out of the center, moved it to another spot on my design wall, and started over. This time I moved the house to the upper right hand corner of the journal page. Then I put a leftover 'X' block in the upper left corner. In my mind it could serve as a "sun" shining down on whatever picture I was creating. Next I found a couple of those orphan log cabin blocks that featured greens. I used them in the foreground of my picture. To me they were fields of crops. Without being consciously aware of it I was creating a scene from my youth: My folks had a cottage on a lake in the middle of farmlands in western Michigan. All I lacked was the lake. Granted, mine is orange, but that's what works. ;- )




I am much happier with this composition than the first one. (I meant to get a shot of the first one to share with you but got so engrossed in creating the new version that I missed my opportunity.) I have basted the top to a piece of batting but couldn't decide right away whether I wanted to do any machine quilting on this one or not. Overnight I decided to just do handwork to quilt and embellish it. I have a pretty good idea of what I'm going to do with the "sun." Not as sure about the house or the fields but we'll see what develops as I work on it...