Quiltalong, and Scrappy or Maximalism?

While I continue to add big stitch hand quilting to my improv quilt, and should have a finish soon, I've spent most of my sewing room time cutting and piecing. 

Keeping up with Weeks and Bill's "Summer Camp Modern Mystery Quiltalong," I completed 24 blocks for Installment 5. Instructions called for making 23 blocks, but I've occasionally been making a few extra, thinking I will have more options for arranging the design - when we finally learn what it is! - and also for piecing a quilt back. 

As before, Installment 5 block choices were based on my preferences for: running through the sprinkler; sailboating; boogie boarding; swimming in a pool; and using sunscreen! Though the block designs have nothing to do with the activity and are just random names given by Weeks and Bill, sometimes a block looks like its name. For example, the fourth row of five block is "swimming pool." Am I not the only one who can see that? 

Most of my sewing efforts have been focused on making half-rectangle triangle (HRT) blocks with my new HuRTy ruler, and playing around with possible layouts.

Using a big pile of 4" Drunkard's Path blocks, and triangle-in-a-square blocks I made back in 2018, and never found a way to use in a quilt, I've been trying to incorporate them into a design with HRTs.

You might have noticed that my first decision was to make every HRT with a striped fabric and a solid. 

Initially, I was thinking to make a scrappy quilt. But as you do, playing around with designs and seeing different possibilities every day, I found myself heading another way.

Intentionally making "Side A" and "Side B" (reversed) HRTs blocks, so as to give more variety in shapes, one of my latest design iterations has me thinking the design looks more like what I think a maximalist quilt looks like. 

One aim of a maximalist quilt is to achieve "more is more." So I've dug further into stash to unearth more striped prints in every color and scale, and a bigger variety of solid colors. With a new intention of aiming for maximalism, I'm also aiming to make a quilt that's at least 60" X 72". 

You know what I'll be doing for a while! 😊 Then... I see appliqué.

Book Recommendation

I enjoy all books written by my favorite Iowa author - Heather Gudenkauf. Though These Hidden Things was published in 2011, Heather's writing style is consistently good. Her stories take place in Iowa, though most of the locations are in towns with made-up names, except for an occasional mentions of major cities like Iowa City or Des Moines.

In These Hidden Things, after serving five years in prison, Allison has just been released. She moves into a halfway house and anticipates beginning a new life, Neither her parents or her younger sister, Brynn, will talk to her, but Allison is determined to get a job and take care of herself.

She begins working at a nearby book store, and is almost-immediately confronted with past actions, and the crime for which she served time. Because of that, she's even more desperate to get Brynn to meet with her. 

Meanwhile, another young woman is regularly visiting the book store to keep tabs on the shop-owner's young son. She knows more about what Allison's did than anyone else, and she won't reveal any of it... until she's forced to.

Linda's score: 4.1/5.0

Last Christmas I gifted my friend Jody one of my homemade travel trays. This week she sent me a picture of her travel tray being used during a family get-away. Jody wrote "My grand-littles decided it was the perfect sleeping bed for Luigi!'

Too adorable. I love it! Linda