(S)Crappy Celebration: Meh? + Stonefields Prep + Pineapple Log Cabin UFO

UGH.  You guys, I am sick of working on this project again!  I finished the blocks I was working on last week but it was such a chore coming up with a layout.  I really hate that I made 5 or 6 versions of each block in the exact same, or nearly the same fabrics, even though I thought that was a feature of the inspiration quilt that I liked and deliberately wanted to replicate when I was starting out.  I have begun mixing some stash fabrics in with the matchy-matchy Tilda prints, but it's not making me love it or anything.  

I find myself wishing this was two (or more) separate quilts.  I love a double 9-patch quilt with a white background and it would be pretty to have a rainbow version with each block a different dominant color.  The other blocks where I didn't use any white fabric, or very little white fabric, have a much heavier feel.  But I've made 42 of these 9" blocks already, enough for a 54" x 63" throw quilt with a 6x7 layout, and I feel like enough already.  Time to wrap this up and move on!

This is the best I could do on the layout, trying not to put identical blocks too close together if I could help it (sometimes I couldn't) and trying to balance out white background, lacy 9-patch blocks with the darker, not-enough-contrast blob blocks as best I could.  This is what we are dealing with:

54 x 63 (S)Crappy Celebration Layout

Checking value distribution in gray scale just to be sure:

Same Photo, in Gray Scale

Then I went to my EQ8 software to see whether adding sashing and cornerstones would improve the quilt at all:

Patchwork Progressing Faster Than Home Renovations

Good Morning and Happy Wednesday, my lovelies!  I'll answer your top questions right off the bat:

1. YES, I'm still here.
2. NO, our home renovations aren't finished yet.
3. YES, I'm still sewing.
4. NO, I don't have much to show for it, though!

I'm still mostly on a break from the delightful-yet-challenging-and-tedious Stonefields sampler quilt, in that I haven't mustered up the creative energy to start prepping the next applique blocks.  I am, however, still stitching up hexagon rosettes for the outer border in the evenings.  Here's one of the latest finished rosettes:

No. 41 of 168 Rosettes Needed for Stonefields Outer Border

I've sewn 41 of the 168 hexagon rosettes for the Stonefields outer border so far, so I'm nearly 25% finished.  Slow going for sure, but I'm getting better at English paper piecing through the repetition and I don't need to think about what I'm doing nearly so much now as I did in the beginning, so it's perfect for keeping fidgety fingers busy in front of the television in the evenings.

Meanwhile, I've been making 9" 9-patch and 4-patch variations for that quilt based on Scrappy Celebrations.  When I abandoned this WIP (Work In Progress) over a year ago, I was feeling like it was burning up too much "good fabric" on a not-very-exciting project.  Now that I've been wasting investing such enormous amounts of time but very little fabric into each of those fiddly Stonefields blocks, it actually feels GOOD to burn up a little more yardage with simpler blocks that go together so much faster.  As in, six of these Scrappy Celebration blocks completed in a single day, compared to two or three weeks to complete just one or two of some of the more complex Stonefields blocks.  The projects balance one another out.  

Here are the completed Scrappy Celebration blocks on the design wall today:

37 Completed Scrappy Celebration Blocks (Out of ??)

I also have the next five blocks in progress at the sewing machine for chain piecing.  And yes, I am aware that I could have sped this up by strip piecing the 3" 9-patch units but I hate pressing strips open and didn't feel like doing the math to figure out how many strips to cut, etc.