Solar eclipse

Today I have seen a solar eclipse. In this part of the world, it was a partial one; the moon's shadow hid the upper side of the sun. We had a welding mask so we could look at the sun while having a noon coffee on the veranda before DH went fishing. This dear man showed once again why I love him so much. (First he told me how lucky he was having me making him sandwiches for his trip, not a common service among fishermen.) When we were having our coffee/tea and discussing the eclipse, he suddenly went in and came back with a cardboard and a pin. After a few experiments with the cardboard (too thick) he made us a camera obscura of a sheet of paper with a pinhole, and another paper where the upside down reflection of the eclipse was to see. He just knows things like that and is always ready to explain them to me. That's love to me.



Now that he is on his way and the sun is round again, I continue arranging the patchwork strips. I'm sure there has been a pattern planned, and it annoys me that I can't seem to get it right. It makes me wonder if there has been something wrong with the strips from the beginning and the quilt never finished because of that problem! This is one arrangement, very problematic in the middle part where the floor is showing through:




Like I told before, the strips are 8 patches long and 9-10 patches long. When I put a short and a long strip on the same row, it looks like this:

There are some extra long strips (two long ones on one row), and one strip will be left over. The repetition is not perfect, and here I just tried to make the dark pieces run diagonally across the quilt. The yellow pieces don't obey any rules. This arrangement makes me think there should not be sashings, but the quilt requires a border that will make us all say Wow! I have no idea what the border will be like, but (with your help) I will find it once the rows are together.

You are still welcome to make suggestions. I will not start sewing this before I have made some smaller projects. This is my 98th post, and I'm thinking to have a giveaway to celebrate my first hundred next week. Therefore I must sew something to give away. I already bought the fabric, washed it and today I'll spend the afternoon with some recorded episodes of Heartbeat and a hot iron. I love to watch British series like Heartbeat (60's in Yorkshire countryside) or Emmerdale (present time Yorkshire countryside). They are great for ironing or folding clean laundry, or hand sewing projects.