Border audition

A completed draft of the thesis is done and my poster presentation session was this morning so I did some celebratory sewing this afternoon. I am still cutting 2.5" squares out of every mostly-solid-colored fabric I can find. In the process I kind of went nuts on my stash. There were fabric piles on every surface. I cut a lot of selvages off and they are heading off tomorrow to Jacquie who recently made a stunning selvage quilt. I have 73 squares cut. I strip pieced them all onto the white fabric and pressed them flat with my mini iron. Even though I still need 27 squares, equivalent to one whole side of the border, I had to array them and put them up to see how it looks so far. There are a lot of placement problems to solve, but I think I like the way it looks. At first I wasn't sure. Maybe a thin dark border to separate the center from the border? I'm not sure.

I also did my first paper piecing today - those circling geese you see at the top of the wall. There were 8 goose and 12 goose varieties of that block. I decided to start with the 8 goose block, which I think was a pretty wise choice. That one is done in some scraps as a learning piece, but I have plans to make quite a few of them to go with the striped diamond blocks. I'll give you a hint, I'm calling it "Kites and Geese" for now.