Just to please myself

 Two of the donation quilts, mentioned in a previous post, have been finished and labelled, but the third one needs more complex quilting, and I needed a break from the constant work related to the "Great Purge", that started mid-March.  So, while I'm not leaving the purging behind completely, I am re-visiting the techniques of Maria Shell, as a design challenge.  There are three big Rubbermaid tubs on my shelving unit that are somewhat dedicated to that type of work. The work requires a good quality, light-weight cotton in a variety of colours and I've chosen Kaufman's Kona cotton, both for its price and its quality. 

There are two full tubs of cotton ready to work with.

And a third tub of various pieced fabric pieces awaiting a use.  It was in this tub that I found the smaller pieced fabric that the zipper pouches, I now have out for sale, were made.  Here's what already pieced scrap is left as of today.  Some extra pieces were added after the top I've been feverously piecing over the past couple of weeks was put, more of less, together.

This is version one.  I knew that it needed more, but had spent a great deal of time to even get this far.  For several days I couldn't get my head around selecting a direction to go, and had been randomly piecing looking for just the right image to base my design on.  I had also been wanting to use a colour scheme that was quite different from any I had used before for this technique, but also had a box of pre-sewn sections that wanted to be used in some way.  They kept shouting at me, and I eventually gave in.  Finally, the red strip in the center jumped into place, once the green on either side was added. I had my anchor.  The triangles were all left over from a past quilt, and found a home here.  But it still needed more.

But I didn't have enough of the green/dark grey checkerboard strips to create four separate strips to balance things out.  Then I realized that I had enough of the narrow, mainly red, strip, to create two full length section, could make a third checkerboard strip, and the whole design fell into place. Here it is with just some basic seams to be stitched, and the horizontal striped piece on the right to be lengthened. As of this morning, all of the horizontal seams are done, and only the vertical seams remain.  And I've had a wonderful time, both with being challenged to create a design, and with using up both fabric and fabric scraps--still purging, but enjoying it a lot more than I have been. (And the mother fish and her babies weren't bothered at all.  Bonus!)