Sweet Plants, Bramble Blooms, and Little Four-Patches

For Christmas my daughter gave me the delightful gift of three sweetgrass braids.  Aren't they beautiful?!  I coiled them into a wreath which I keep out whenever the kitties aren't here. 

When I am near them, their sweet fragrance reminds me that spring and summer aren't so far away. 

Even when I'm unmotivated I feel the need to keep doing.  It's a rare time when I just sit and do nothing.  At times like this it's good have fabric already cut and ready to sew. 

I've been sewing 1½" four-patches for a while with nothing in particular in mind.  They're mostly autumn/natural colors with cream/off-white alternate squares.  I'd been trying to decide what to do, whether to leave them as four-patches, sew four together, or turn them into 9-patch blocks.  And then Taryn of Repro Quilt Lover started the Tiny Nine-Patch Challenge to make little 480 9-patch blocks this year.  (Her squares are cut at 1", so very tiny.)  It didn't take me long to decide to join.  It will be easy enough to turn these 4-patches into really scrappy 9-patches.  Will I succeed at making 480 this year?  That's 9-10 per week.  We'll see.

Bramble Blooms is often on my mind and I'm feeling pressure to make decisions.  The kitties will arrive on Sunday and I'll have to have it off the floor before they get here (so they don't use it as a skating opportunity). 

All the while I was stitching the center I was thinking of arcs in a border.  I didn't know what the prompt would be for the first border and was glad to see it included applique.  Thinking of arcs was as far as my mind went.  I didn't consider what the background color behind them would be or how many there would be or whether they would surround the whole block.  So I've been playing. 

I love the teal surrounding the center and I think I like the arcs, though maybe they should be a little more uniform in shape and size.  Or maybe not arcs but something else.  (I have no idea what.)  That blue star on the circle will go.  It's too distracting!

Below, the narrow teal border gets brown all the way around.  But the arcs (or not)?  Cream/off-white like the center background fabrics?

Maybe red arcs?  Red on brown?  Maybe a dark red stripe for the quarter square triangles in the upper left?  Maybe fewer arcs?  And on how many sides?  Or no arcs?

Or maybe cream fabrics, or cream with prints for the arcs, or even red-print arcs?  I thought the prints were distracting and I didn't think the one with red on it worked.  It looks pink. 

But wait, maybe a narrow teal border with a wide cream border?  I could make red arcs.  Or brown.  But is it too bland?

Oh, wait again.  What about a narrow brown border with a wider teal border?  I love teal but maybe not that.

I'm leaning toward a narrow teal and a wide brown border. 

I'll have to figure out the arcs--color, size, and whether on one side or two, three, or four.  Or no arcs and something else instead.  But what, if not arcs?

I also need to decide about the quarter square triangles.  I'm thinking of using the same fabric as the border with another fabric for the strips between the triangles.  Maybe--maybe one of the greens I used for the flowers.  Maybe.  Or maybe that for the square in the center.  Lots of decisions yet to make.

My concern is this:  What happens next?  What will I do on the next border after such a strong color on the first border?   How would it look to have a light border next to the brown?  Or next to the arcs, for that matter?  Or how would it look to have another dark border next to the brown?   Heck, I don't even know what the prompt will be for the next border!

I have lots of decisions to make and I'd like to make a few of them before Saturday evening.

Can fun be stressful?  Does it always have to be relaxing?  I'm enjoying this process and I think I'm having fun. 

Both the dried sweetgrass at the beginning of this post and the sweet woodruff, below, smell like sweet clover.  It's such a refreshing fragrance to me.

If you've visited here before you may remember this pot of sweet woodruff.  It's grown a lot since I last posted it, and I'm so pleased that it's grown, even it if is getting a little leggy.  (That dead stem on the left was a cutting I stuck in the soil hoping it might root.  It didn't.)  If the plants in the pot survive till early April, I can put the pot outside again and plant in May.

I'm linking this post to
>  Finished (or not) Friday at Alycia Quilts
>  Can I Get a Whoop Whoop? at Confessions of a Fabric Addict
>  Off the Wall Friday at Creations at Nina Marie's blog
Thanks for hosting, ladies.

--Nancy.