That title is a mouthful.  Did I get it all?

Katja Marek, who wrote this book, is hosting Mother Hen to all of us as we work our way towards having a new version of a millefiore quilt, based on the blocks in her book.  Laurel and Rhonda and Cindy and about 1500 of my other closest friends are doing this.  It’s fun to see the rosettes pop up on Instagram and in my Google Images when I search for them for inspiration.

I’d pulled these pages of a Morocan town out of the travel magazine, with all their aquas and moody blues, yellow-greens and dark blues as inspiration, then pulled a bunch of fabrics.

For a long time they were pinned into my design wall, but then I needed the wall, so they now live in this basket.

The very middle six triangles are the center, and here you see round one, of Rosette One.

Katja sends us an email every month, telling us about the next rosette.  I act like we’ve done this for years, but really we all started in January.  Well, people who weren’t trying to get a college English class up and going started January first, but the others of us began like, last week or so.  Here I’m plotting Round Two.

Still plotting.  I ordered the templates from Paper Pieces, as suggested, mainly because my brain just couldn’t handle one more decision.  A good choice for me, but I know others are tracing them off.  Definitely do the glue stick thing when you attach your fabric to the paper pieces.  It’s brilliant.

Tonight, as I watched The Muppet Movie (the most recent one with Tina Fey, who made me laugh), I finished off the third round of Rosette One.  I have one more round to go.  This thing is getting really big, so I decided to pop out the interior papers.

I loosen the edges by sliding underneath them with my stiletto, and they pop right out.

Fun to be at this point.  Tomorrow, after I grade six more essays (I had a batch come in on Wednesday and I’m doing six-a-day until they are done), I’ll pull all those fabrics out of my basket and make a bigger mess in here (see photos below).

I also wrote up my goals for the quarter, conveniently skipping January because we all know what that month was like.  I can already see some holes in the quarter, like where are the Circle Blocks?  One a month?

My horoscope, which I read faithfully and believe about 10% of the time, said I was spending too much time on things that would not matter in the long run.  This is one of those 10% times it actually coincided with what was going on in my real life.  Like lining up the readings for the next unit on the ironing board.  I sent eight more readings off to the printers today.  I have to get this unit ready because I’m headed to QuiltCon in about (wait, let me get my phone out of my pocket because QuiltCon has its own app that tells me how many days. . .)

Okay, this was a couple of days ago, but you get my drift.  They have thought of everything to make us freaked out, excited quilters.  It’s like it’s more than a Quilt Show…it’s a Life Changing Event.  I think of it as a way to party with quilters, and certainly these young’uns will be a different bunch than the usual staid quilters.  I knew this because one of the items in their scavenger hunt is to find someone whose tattoo I love.  Right.

Okay, so between the prepping, grading, planning and working on everything else, here is a Truthy Moment: the mess at my sewing desk.  I expect it will be clean, say, about July.

I loved reading all your comments about our recent Four-in-Art quilts, and am slowly working my way through them.  Somehow the internet swallowed a few comments, so I have to go and find them.  I can see them on the website, but not in my email, where I usually answer them.  Thank you all for the lovely things you wrote.  I think we were energized by new members, the new yearly theme and the added bonus of choosing our own quarterly theme.  Now you know why I ordered my papers for my hexagon.  Way too many decisions!

P.S.  I think Spring is trying to happen out here!