Abstract quilt

It has been a busy week, and I was lucky enough to have some creativity time yesterday. I worked on my monthly abstract challenge (theme = orange) and forced myself to finish it today, even though it doesn't look anything like I had planned. My original sketch was a circle of triangle shapes, using the colours of the colour wheel, with the orange pulling out of the circle, all on a white background. When I went to my scraps, I couldn't find any fabrics to make this work. But I did find some black strips from Judy and some orange teardrop shapes from Julie (some guild members don't like to save scraps...can you believe it?!? so they share their scraps

...lucky me!). My philosophy is - if the scrap jumps out of the bag to be in the project, I find a way to fit it in! So I made up a new plan, cut the black strips with wavy cuts and ironed them to a fusible interfacing. It didn't stick very well, and I wondered if fusibles have a shelf life...a "best before" date? I free motion quilted little orange seed stitches over the wavy seam lines. Then I put the orange sections on and free motion quilted around the edges. I really wanted to quilt the orange sections but couldn't decide how to do that. Here are some quilting ideas I considered but couldn't decide which one, so I left it for now:I then finished it with a striped binding, and some orange beads in the centre. I try to do a little sewing, even if it is hand work or beading, every day. But I think I need to stop for a little while. I have split my thumb nail down the centre, on my needle holding hand, and I think it is from too much hand work...is there such a thing? When sewing on the orange beads it was really hurting. Anyone have advice on how to fix this problem? Maybe I should do some machine piecing this weekend and give my thumb a rest?