Circle of Glee!

I'm always starting something new but slow on the finishes. When I mentioned yesterday's new project to Belinda at the coffee shop, I thought she was going to choke on her latte. Who could forget the dreaded Circle of Eek! In my own words, "...if anyone asks me for a circle of geese again, I must just die." My patchwork skills have come a long way in those two years though. So without fear or trepidation, I willingly braved the biggest circle of geese that I'd ever seen.

It started with one of my patchwork-ready fabric tubs. Rather than sort by colour, I like to sort my fabrics into ready-to-sew palettes. I find that sometimes I can spend hours agonizing over the right colour aka fabric paralysis. Having the fabric stacked by project and ready makes it easier for me to grab and go. I prefer this to sorting by colour or designer. It works for me.

On a side note, I'm not alone in fabric paralysis. There's a weekly twitter chat called #talknt for quilters of all skill levels. The big names even come out for it. As I learned last week, it turns out many of us are bitten by the fabric paralysis bug. The chat group was great because we talked about ways to change our habits to help us move forward. We meet each week. I don't always make it, but it's fun when I do.

With my bucket in hand, I needed a pattern. Ages ago, I bought a pack of Bella Bella Quilts Paper Foundations for something like $10. These foundation papers are designed to go with a book but I skipped the book and went straight for the good stuff. My rationale was simple for $10, I'd get a whole lot of paper piecing patterns that I wouldn't have to trace. I knew I wouldn't get the directions or templates for complete Bella Bella Quilts, but I thought I could use the bits and pieces in some sort of clever way and make it my own.

As designed the Cosmati ring templates should make a giant circle of geese. That's 48 geese made from eight arcs. Or if you are feeling feisty you could make the more complex Cosmati II ring which has even more tiny geese in it. My feist-factor yesterday was zero, so I took the simpler alternative.

Not content with a simple circle, I futzed around and decided what I'd really love to try one day is a giant pickle of geese. These templates nicely lend themselves to a pickledish variation made with flying geese arcs, don't they?

And that's what I would really love to do. But let's not kid ourselves. That would be a big quilt and I don't do big. It'd be great though wouldn't it? For now, I'll cast the arcs aside while I decide what their fate is.

As a brief review, I found the Bella Bella Quilts Paper Foundations to be good value for money. Nice thin tear away paper. Clear lines for sewing. Another good tool in my sewing arsenal.