While I've been away...

Lots of little things have happened in the last couple of weeks. Nothing exciting really, just day to day sort of stuff. Anyone who's read this blog for any length of time knows that I struggle with the idea that what I do might be interesting to anyone else. But, there are lots of blogs out there that I love to read, so, here goes.

The deadline for the Pilgrim/Roy Invitational Challenge is fast approaching. My goal is to ship it out by Friday, but we'll see how it goes. It's been my main focus for the last few weeks.

Quilters often think, when they see an applique intense quilt such as this, that it's hard to do. While the piecing gave me bits of fits (can you say inset seams?), the applique is just simple shapes. The motifs are not difficult to do, but they do take time.

I struggled a bit, with the fabric choices. As you've seen, I really wanted to use polka dots, the challenge fabric just begged for polka dots! But I was seriously dubious about my original selections, and had pretty much given up on the idea. I had a brief retail therapy opportunity before speaking for the Gathering in Fort Wayne, IN on National Quilt Day, where I found this perfect palette of dots.

All tone on tone, multiple values, perfect compliments to the crazy challenge fabric. (Yes, those are fingerless gloves on my desk, it can get pretty nippy in the studio.) Once I had just the right fabrics, I just dove into creating the templates for the applique shapes.

It's been a while since I've worked on a project with repeating motifs, but by marking each piece (I call it my addressing system), I'll know where each shape belongs. As the flowers were cut apart, each shape was stacked up on the appropriate fabric and then pressed in place. Another big bite of the project is done.