Designing and prepping

 Part Five of the Di Ford Mystery quilt has arrived. I have the first four ellipses stitched down. I am managing to get a little faster, now I think I have got it to 20-30 stitches per inch instead of the stupidly high number I was doing before.

 They are all prepped and ready to go. All 56 of the ellipse shape plus the four circles for the corners.

 Meanwhile I have started to design the final border for the machine appliqué quilt. I thought swags might be the way to go with the same flower from the rest of the quilt between the swags. But I want loads of room for fancy quilting..... The tools of my trade for designing these was a calculator to work out what width to go for and my acrylic rings. Except I needed a bigger ring. I could have got out my beam compass and drawn a larger circle but the point of the compass would have been way off the paper. I just wanted (needed) a bigger round thing. I had the lid of a frying pan but that was in use (feed us tonight or get the design finished?). I went round the house looking for large circles. Then I found the huge chocolate box lid. Perfect (I swear when I bought my husband those chocolates it was not to add another design tool to my kit.)

Perfect.
BUT after working it all out, I am thinking I might like to go round the inside and the outside of this border just with some sort of dogtooth triangle arrangement. Then I could do loads of big feathers with trapunto...... Procrastination rules.

 I am lucky I got anything done this week at all. I went to the dentist on Friday for the next stage in my dental treatments. Three more extractions and five (that's right FIVE) implants. I had not realised they have to drill into the bone to insert each implant. I had tried not to think about it but if pushed I would have thought something like a self tapping screw. It is odd the way my mind works in such times. I imagined my body being found on a beach and the police identifying me by the serial numbers of the implants. (note to self: stop reading crime thrillers on going to bed) There is more to come and the treatment will not end until shortly before Christmas. I am back this Friday to have the stitches out.