THE BACKGROUND OF THE BIG FLOWER

 I pulled out a pile of low-volume fabrics for the background of the big flower of Amity Prime.  They are mostly old tone-on-tone whites and creams, leftover from the 1990's.  I had put them into a 'going away' box to be removed from my stash.

I'm making pieced squares of odd sizes for now.  I'm having a hard time not putting more variety into them.  I want to keep them plain and simple with the occasional spot of color, but my 'instinct' is to add more.   It goes against my grain to make them plain.

SHALL WE CALL THEM THORNS?

 Another 'row' on the petals.  I made these 'thorns', but I can't sew everything together yet.  I need to start working on the background that will be pieced in between them.

MORE SCRAPS AND MORE

 Cutting out all of these curves and strange shapes produces a lot of scraps.

And trying and rejecting different colors does too.

Here's how it ended today.  The last few rows are not sewn on yet.

ANOTHER COLORFUL ROW

 I've cleaned up and added the next 'row' on the petals of Amity Prime.

I'm not really happy with it - it's sort of reminds me of a circus or something.  It's a little too much for me.  I'm thinking that when I start to add the blues and greens it will tone down a bit.  Of course, flowers are very colorful and beautiful.  I just need to get over it.

I'm starting to get concerned about how to put it all together!

WINDY DAY

 We went for an early walk in Lincoln Park this morning because the rains were expected at 8am.  It was very windy.  Lots of leaves, twigs, small branches and cones were every where.

It was a hang-onto-your-hat day.

Then it was up to the studio to work on my Amity Prime.  I made some parts for the next round.  It's been a fit as you go process.  I'm still not sure how it will all work out.  I spent a very pleasant afternoon with my Brave Patch Monday gals and I managed to get a lot done.

This was my original idea (all of the circles are not appliqued yet)

This is how it looked at the end of the day.

LOTS OF CIRCLES

 I'm hand appliqueing circles onto my flower petals.  Lots of circles, nine for each petal.  I think that makes 45 circles.  Oh, my.

LITTLE TINY PIECES

 Seems to have been a while since I pieced such tiny pieces.  It's not my favorite thing, but it's not bad.

These will be the parts for the next row on the petals.

Its the time of the year when our big tree in the front yard starts dropping a million and half catkins - and pollen.  Green pollen everywhere.

MORE PRECISE PIECING

This project is supposed to be about improv, but I've started out with a plan and I want to make it just so.  The original drawing was improv, does that count?

In order to get the look I wanted, I decided paper-piecing was required.

 

PETALS

 I made the beginning of some petals for my workshop project.

CHOREOGRAPHY WORKSHOP

 I'm attending a 4-week workshop with Irene Roderick every Tuesday this month.  I was distracted by the 'Trinity' project the first week, but I've started on a new project that comes straight from one of my daily doodles (homework she has us doing). I'm calling it Amity Prime.

It's a stylized flower.  My doodle has five petals, so I drew out one petal onto freezer paper so I would have a 'pattern' to get the sizes correct.  Hopefully, it will all fit together.

I'm not sure about the colors yet.  I'm going to play it by ear, picking colors as I go.

I'm not even sure how I'm going to piece this...or how the background will look.  It's a project in motion.