Whole lot of cutting

I spent both yesterday and today at a mini-retreat at the local quilt shop:  quilt all day, go home to sleep and come back to quilt all day again.  Though I brought my sewing machine I didn’t do much sewing.  I sewed a few units but I mostly cut, cut and cut some more. I discovered that the cutting table at the retreat is at a much nicer height for this task than my kitchen table.  Since there are 882 pieces in this new quilt I decided to use the better table while I could!

I managed to cut 596 pieces, and have 78 other pieces cut that need to be subcut into 156 kite-shaped things.  When I went back this morning I remembered to bring ziplock bags to sort all the pieces into before they ended up scattered all over the workroom.
There is still the matter of trimming points on most of the pieces.  I did try skipping this step but found it too difficult to figure out how to match up angled sides without the trimmed points.  The trimmed points match up beautifully with each other so despite the tedium of trimming it will save time and gnashing of teeth when I start sewing.  At least I can trim points a few at a time as I am ready to sew them.
So far I have this sewn:

I am making a serious dent in my blue stash!  This will turn into a version of “Kyoto Garden” by Judy Martin from her book “Stellar Quilts” (thanks for the book, Mom!).  The colour selection and placement in her version are very carefully  planned, but I decided to try random and scrappy.  As I placed everything on the design wall tonight I started having second thoughts about that, but all those pieces are cut so I’ll press on the way I started!
I’m not sure when I will have progress to show on this one.  I have two quilts to baste and start quilting, I need to sew the backing to the back of the prairie points on the leaf quilt (the blocks are all quilted!), and I’m toying with the idea of painting the kitchen, and maybe the living room…