So about five minutes before I knew jerry had been laid off this spring, I ordered a HUGE pile of Kona Cottons from Fat Quarter Shop (btw: I asked them to label each one in my “comments” and to my delight they DID. AWESOME.)
So yummy.
Even more delicious when they arrived. Even though I felt tremendous guilt because of the job situation. I pet them for a long time. And arranged them.
I daydreamed about them.
And then one Friday night I made a little quiltie from them.
Another night I cut strips off of all of them and started to play with improv circles. I’m not finished with this one yet.
And a few weeks ago, I pulled a small group of fabrics from the collection and decided to try making something, but not having a plan before I started to sew. That had worked so well for A Semma Tree that I wanted to try it again. 
The first night, this is what I had come up with. Negative space is hard for me, so rather than hack at it and overwork it, I left it on the design wall for the night.
The next day, I still didn’t like the big chunk of greens, so I chopped them up a bit and added more.
And then I decided it looked like a rhinoceros hiding in the garden — and it was as large as my cutting mat, so I trimmed it so all the edges were squared up. 
But I still had all the leftover big chunks from my original pieces that I had pulled , so I decided to play with the idea of having the same basic shape, but in different sizes– scale, unity, repetition.
Birdie feet.
Lots of birdie feet. This was fun, and appealed to the organized show-your-work mathematician side.
They all hung out together on the design wall.
But then, as birdies are wont to do, the birdie feet decided to get on the rhinoceros. And I covered the huge bothersome chunk of white fabric in the rhinoceros with a piece that had been trimmed off. I like it better. I haven’t inserted it yet but I will. I still haven’t sewn all of this together, but it makes me happy every time I look at it.
Everyone should have a rhinoceros hiding in their sewing room. Seriously. And birdie feet. Don’t forget the birdie feet.
