And the last circle is made

My days of stitching little circles have ended, for now at least!  366 days later, here are the final eight.

It doesn't look very impressive for a year's worth of circles when they're piled up like this.

I've been leaning toward an on-point layout for assembling the quilt, and several months ago one of the participants showed her layout with a very narrow dark sashing framing each square.  Ever since we began this quilt-along I've pondered how I could incorporate this lovely burnt orange fabric into the project.  I hope you can see all the little overlapping circles in the photo below.

So, this is what has been simmering on the design wall for the past few days.

I still need to do a lot of the dreaded quilty math before strips are cut and the sashings are stitched. My preliminary calculations indicate that this layout will make a queen bedspread size quilt with circles left over.  They also indicate that I'll be a bit short on the burnt orange fabric!  So, this is all very tentative at the moment.  The one thing I do know is that I'll make a quilt of some size using this fabric - it just makes me smile every time I walk into the sewing room!

The fabric in question is by Moda, and is named Tranquility, by Sandy Gervais, Pattern #17398, and is from about 2008 or 2009.  I've had the fabric in my stash for a couple years, sent by another blogger who was downsizing her stash.   I've done an online search but haven't found any more out there, so if any of you happen to have a yard or even two languishing in your stash that you would like to part with and sell, please let me know!

This morning will be spent with my quilt ministry buddies, working on quilts 13-16 for the year!  Not bad for our little group of 5 regular members!  Then it's off to our little town hall to complete my civic duty and privilege and vote, the old-fashioned way, with paper and pencil though they do have a new-fangled machine that counts those carefully completed paper ballots.   The day dawned cold and clear, and promises to be a beautiful sunny November day, which I choose to take as a sign of hope after the many months of dark rumbling political storms we have all endured.