Darn it Mr. Lincoln

Hi everyone from super hot NJ.  I usually spend a lot of summer hours sewing, but I haven't gotten in the groove yet this year, but here is what I'm working on today - Mr. Lincoln.

I'm old school.  I sketch, cut, audition, etc.  How do you design?  EQ?  The old fashioned way?  I think it's so interesting.

Here are my sketches for my Lincoln Challenge quilt that I'm doing with Jill and Susan.

Version I

Version II

The current version that I'm working on

Here are some blocks that I'm making.

And it took 2 sketches with notes to figure out the size I wanted.  I'm a very visual learner.  I don't even know what some of these notes mean now...

In a previous post there was a picture of this in the background and Quilt Hollow asked me about this collection.  These are darning eggs, used to darn sock and other garments.

Here are some of my favorites:
The bobber

Fancy silver handled darner

Pretty inlaid wood

This one has a light and dark side, to use on light or dark socks.  The handle is used for darning gloves.

These are marked "Dec. 18 1900" and have a metal ring for holding the item in place.

 An assortment of thimbles -

They need a little cleaning, the tiny one is from my mothers' Monopoly game from the 1950s.

What are you up to?