Some

Several years ago, while chilling in a hotel room on a teaching trip, I tried to find something worth watching on tv. Hotel cable has lots to offer as long as it's sports. Unless it's the Detroit Tigers, I'm totally not interested.

I finally settled on the Food Network,with Emeril Lagasse in all his glory. I don't remember what he was making, something on his stove top. He was emphasizing that this dish should be cooked on medium low. In his silly way, he pulled the knob off the stove and pointed out all the settings between off and scorch. Bam! It nearly knocked me out of my chair.

All of my life I have struggled with a black/white, on/off, right/wrong  kind of thinking. I'm sure that it goes hand in hand with my perfectionistic tendencies.These things do not make for happy camping. I've come pretty far on my journey to recover from perfectionism. At least I can catch myself in the act and give myself a stern talking to. The yes/no, not so much.

I've been in kind of a bad place for the last couple of years. Raising my rambunctious boys had been my sole purpose in life for decades, and now they are well and truly launched. I know that my empty nest is weighing on me. Don't get me wrong, Kent and I are thrilled to have our honeymoon suite back, but some days I kept those boys alive by shear force of will, despite their best efforts to thwart me. That they are thriving, responsible adults, taking the world by storm gives me more joy than any deal ever sealed. And yet...

Travel has also been getting me down. Oh, how I love to teach. I really do believe that it is my strongest skill. But I can only think of bad words when I consider the travel experience. It's never the people on the other end, it's the travel itself. In a word, it hurts.

I've pretty much emptied my bucket list in the quilting universe. I've done almost all of the things that I thought would be pie-in-the-sky achievements: being on Simply Quilts, and other tv shows; designed fabric; designed for magazines; project on cover of magazine; name on covers; teaching at big shows; teaching all over the country (and beyond). What more is there to do but more of the same?

So, I've been thinking about quitting. Everything.Seriously. No more travel, no more teaching, no more designing, no more sewing. Nada. Applewood Farm has served its purpose (to put the boys through college), so what's the point, right? In or out.

This morning, as I was weeding my herb garden it occurred to me that I could weed for just as long as I wanted to. Every gardener knows that, unless you have a one planter on a sea of concrete, a garden is never completely weeded. Sometimes all it takes is to turn your back, and there will be new weeds. And yet, here I was thinking that if only I worked harder, the garden could be somehow done. Duh.

Some. What a concept. If I weed some every now and then, the garden will be better for it. If I clean some, the house will stop looking like a war zone. If I teach some, the travel can be fun instead of arduous. If I quilt some, I can make what I like and work at a pace that comes closer to play.

I know, too soon old, too late smart, but I'm not quite done yet. I'm still a work in progress, as we all are. I'm going to try out this some for a while and see if I like it. I'm off to make some stems for my applique, and maybe cut some flowers for the dining room table, and perhaps bake some cookies. (Some spinning could happen too.)

One Crazy Cat

Even in the midst of all the moving drama here, I have been working on stuff. Well, sort of working on stuff. I have given myself the summer off from work responsibilities, taking some time to recharge and refresh my creative soul.

I signed up for Allie Aller's Crazy Quilting Craftsy Class (try saying that three times, I double dog dare you!), and I was immediately hooked. Click HERE to get the class at 25% off!

To create her crazy quilt blocks, Allie uses several different foundation piecing methods. The class materials include templates of the blocks for download. So I did. I printed four of them and joined them together.

About the same time I found all the parts to recreate a kitty from my More! Hand Applique by Machine book, with the templates already pressed in place and just waiting for my attention. (Dealing with all of the leftover parts and pieces from book and class samples will be my mission for the rest of the summer, but more on that in another post.) So I glue basted the kitten and then traced her onto the crazy quilt templates.

From there I needed to refine the shapes, getting rid of segments that were no longer needed with the cat in the center. I swear that I started out planing to do foundation piecing, just as Allie showed, even going so far as to cutting a muslin base. But in the end I just couldn't make myself do it.

Instead, I treated the entire piece as one big applique. You're shocked, I know. I glued together several sheets of Wash Away Applique Paper. I used up some sheets that were misprinted class handouts. Taping the sheets shiny side up (shiny = same when deciding orientation. Matte = mirror image) to the templates, I used a pencil and ruler to transfer the lines to the WAAS.

To try to save my mind as I fitted these back together, I marked the unbasted edges with x's and transferred the piece number to the matte side of the paper.

As always, picking out the fabric was fun. A little creepy with the googly eyes peering out at us, huh?

First the cat was glue-basted and sewn together,

and then the crazy part of the background was also glue basted and sewn together.

Here she is, in all her crazy glory. My next step is to embellish her with embroidery, beads and what ever else comes to mind. Stay tuned!

Letting go, again

My third son, Caleb, and his wife, Elaine, just left for a fantastic adventure. They loaded everything they own into a rental truck and left for new jobs in Garden City, Kansas, more than a thousand miles from here.

 

It was just about two years ago that we hosted their wedding here. It was a crazy wonderful time, preparing the for the wedding. Having four sons, I had pretty much given up on the idea of ever having a bride in my house, but Elaine made that dream come true.

 

These two kids are hardworking and determined. They have goals, and to meet those goals they moved in with us Memorial Day weekend, hoping to save enough money to make their move to Kansas a little easier. They were terrific roommates, despite the roller coaster ride of managing the logistics of moving half way across the country.

 

After a fruitless search for a rental unit that would allow two cats, a crazy woman (me, of course) suggested that they look for a house to buy. Fasten your seat belts for a wild ride. The loan was pre-approved, a quick trip to Garden City to house shop, offer written and accepted, loan un-approved, new bank, pre-approved, and endless paperwork for about six weeks.

 

It nearly broke my heart to see them go. It was different than seeing the guys off to college, that was a temporary separation. It was different than moving my oldest to the other side of the state, just a couple of hours away. This move marks the beginning of their truly grown-up lives.

 

Even while feeling sad to see them go, I am so excited for them. It has me remembering the move to our first grown-up jobs, and how thrilling that was. When they arrive in Garden City today, they will do the final walk-through of their house. Tomorrow they will close and move in. They've taken two giant steps into the rest of their lives, and I know they will do great! I hope Garden City knows how lucky they are to have them.

Camp Loopy again

 The deadline for finishing my first Camp Loopy project is fast approaching. It needs to be done and posted on The Loopy Ewe's website before the end of the month.

Gracie, the wonder dog, stands guard over the drying yarn. I learned a lot while spinning this yarn. While the gradations are not nearly as gradual as I wanted them to be, the yarn turned out to be fairly consistent in size and soft. It was a joy to knit.

It's a modular knit, meaning each little fan was built on the earlier fans. It was a lot harder than it should have been, mostly because I seem to be incapable of counting rows.

My "hiking buddies" and I were assigned to Mt. Tinknomore. Tink is knit backwards, or to unknit. I did a whole lot of tinking on this project. Not that it was at all hard, I am just still waiting for the return of my brain.

All in all, I'm pretty impressed with myself. I spun enough yarn to knit up this pretty shawl, and knit it up, all in just about a month. Stand back lest my cape snap you in the eye!

I'd like to knit this shawl again, with a solid color, perhaps a pale pink or peach. It has the potential to be quite elegant.




And hot of the heels of Project One, Project Two is about to start. This month's challenge is to knit something that has been very popular on Ravelry. (If you knit or crochet or spin or weave, you HAVE to get on Ravelry. It's simply awesome.)

 I'll be making a sweet little cardigan with cotton yarn, and hanging out in treehouse #4.

Yellow or no yellow, that is the question

Moving forward again on the On a Summer's Day project, finally! Almost everything is pinned to the background. I seem to be a larkspur short of a quilt (no surprise there). I'm hoping it will magically appear while I'm making other choices. After looking for several days for the leaves, I found them exactly where I had put them: in my project bag for my last teaching trip of the year.

All the dots are the heads of the flat flowerhead pins. Those babies are sharp. There was a whole lot of ouching going on as I pinned more and more pieces. I'm just glad that I didn't bleed on the thing.

Clearly I still need to add in the stems, but I have to decide which will be fabric bias stems and which will be embroidered in.The butterflies have been left off as well. I had planned for one in the upper left and the middle right. The missing larkspur should be right at the top. I'm not at all sure that it needs to be replaced.

Now the little yellow flowers have been added in. I fancy them to be little coreopsis zagreb, named for a small town in Croatia, where my grandparents are from. Along with them, feathery ferny leaves would be embroidered. I moved the top larkspur over just a smidge, and now I don't think the a.w.o.l. flower is missed at all.

Yellow or no yellow, what do you think? I'm tending towards the yellow, and I think it also needs a few more. Just a couple up top, and maybe in the lower left. Yes? No?

Beth quilts!

At last! All of my deadlines are met. (I did do a super secret project that you will be able to see this fall.) And I can finally get back to my own applique project. The project went into hibernation when my crazy travel schedule started, but more importantly, when I couldn't decide on a background. I really, really, really loved the one on the left, but it does overpower the applique, sigh. And the one on the right is too close in color to the larkspurs.

One of the nice things about travel is the opportunity to visit new quilt shops. If only I could remember which city this was in! I came home with several candidates for the background, and this one won. It's a little more vibrant than this shows, it's mostly a robin's egg blue with hints of a purple undertone.

So, with that, I could get back to the embellishing. My mind is just too literal sometimes, and I just couldn't get past the idea that veins are usually indented, not elevated. Embroidered lines are elevated. Luckily I hadn't gotten very far (I think I knew I wasn't going to like it in my heart of hearts), so it wasn't hard to pick out.

I did want to add more dimension to the roses, so I pulled out the heat n sta fleece from Floriani.  It's what I used on the basket rim and base.

Using my trusty light box and a sharpie pen, I traced the shapes I wanted to emphasize, and then cut them out. After the first one I realized that there was no need to trace each shape if I was going to cut it out as a unit.

There were also places that I wanted to really push forward, so additional little bits were cut. My original plan was to layer the fleece with the smallest parts pressed in place first, and then secured with the larger, overlapping piece. But in the end I decided to do just the opposite, adding the smaller bits on top of the larger, hoping that would reduce any lines or sharp drop offs.

My next thought was that I needed to add free motion veins in my emphasized areas before I put the motifs on the background, which would allow those areas to retain their puff.

From the back side you can see how the fleece was layered and then stitched through. Every one of this steps are a bit of an experiment for me. I'll only know if they were effective when the quilt is done. It's so very lovely to have the time to hash this out. A project without a deadline is just way more fun.

The remaining embellishment will have to wait until the motifs are stitched to the background. The roses and basket are in place, the little yellow flowers are awaiting their placement. Now, if only I could remember where I put the leaves and larkspurs. Well, where ever they are, I'm sure they're safe.

It's Camp Loopy Time!

I love Camp Loopy. Yes, I realize it's just a ploy to get me to buy wool yarn in the summer, but it's a fun ploy and there are prizes. Our first project kicks off on June 1st.

Because knitting something in a month is not hard enough, I decided to up the ante this month by spinning the wool for the yarn. The Loopy Ewe now sells wool roving, so using it spin will qualify me in the challenge.

This is the Purple Mustang colorway of Lorna's Laces wool roving top. Top means that the fibers have been combed out nicely for spinning, ready to go. This one wasn't. It was kind of matted.

I've been wanting to do a shawl with color gradations, so I knew that I would be combing it out anyway, so on I went.

 The first step was to tear the roving apart to separate the different values. Working light to dark, the hunks of roving were sorted into individual stacks of shades of purple.

From there, each hank was combed, using nearly lethal wool combs. The tines are very, very sharp, and it took just a couple of pokes for me to come to respect the tools.

The roving includes both red purple and blue purple, making it a bit of a challenge to sort out the values. The blue purples just looked darker. To solve the problem, I used my camera, set to black & white, to rearrange the combed blobs in value order. See how the colorless photo helps to block out the confusing color. I use this trick with my applique as well, when a subtle value shift is important.

I want to make a lace weight, or light fingering weight yarn. This is pretty fine yarn, used for knitting shawls and socks. Ultimately the yarn will be two ply, so I separated the value gradations in two.

Finally ready for spinning, the fluffs of wool have been stacked up in a basket, near at hand for spinning.

I've finished spinning the first run of fiber, and am about half way on the second. I'm still undecided on whether I will spin the whole lot as a two ply for a shawl, or go for a three ply and make a pair of socks. We shall see.

Knitting for the first project starts on June 1st. The Loopy Ewe gave me permission to start early on the spinning, since it's neither casting on or knitting. So hopefully, by the time you are reading this, I will be done with the spinning and ready to knit.

Where I've been

Well, hello! You're still here! How lovely of you to keep checking in while I have clearly checked out.

It has been a crazy travel year for me. I had set up a perfect schedule, with just enough trips, when two offers came in that I just couldn't say "no" to, starting with a trip to Denver in January to tape with Craftsy.

Then there was Atlanta, GA, and Fort Worth and Arlington, Texas. Arriving extra early for the Texas trip, I was able to spend a delightful afternoon at the Dallas Arboretum. Oh, my, it was a sight for sore eyes, this beautiful day of color and sunshine. We've had such a dreary winter here in Michigan. These teaching trips have the side benefit of recharging my color-deprived winter soul.

With hardly a moment to catch my breath, I was off again, this time to Portland, OR. The invitation to add this retreat sponsored by Quiltmaker to my "perfect" schedule is one that I will never regret accepting. Not only did I have class after class of marvelous students, the organizers made it easy for we teachers to find time to chat.

Most of the time we work alone, flying from guild to guild to do our job. The opportunity to chat with our peers is priceless. We can learn so much from each other about the business of teaching, and dealing with the downsides of being an itinerant teacher.

The folks at Quiltmaker put on a fabulously fun retreat. Even if the next one is not nearby, it is worth the trip.



In April I was back in Denver for the Arapahoe Quilt Guild of Denver (hello all you clever quilters!), and taught for two more guilds here in Michigan.

May started with a delightful trip to Duluth, MN. Just like Saginaw, Duluth was also hanging on to winter with a death grip. Quilters braved freezing rain and snow to drive from near and afar to get to the classes. (Thank you for that!)

Helen, the organizer, and I have been playing calendar tag for ages. It has taken some time for the trip to actually come to be, and we were both excited to have the trip finally happen. She was so happy that she ordered cupcakes for us decorated with the design of the class project. How very cool is that?

Helen is delightful, and so are the rest of the guild members. I almost always enjoy the people I meet on the road, but sometimes I meet someone that I just bond with. Helen is one of them.

The students were very productive, and a joy. The chemistry was so perfect, they played along so beautifully.

As always, I have been tinkering around with how I teach my classes. I've revamped the Forget Me Not project. The new way gives the students time to get more of the project done in class.We were all very pleased with the results!

I have one more trip to go, I'm off to Big Rapids, MI next Saturday to lecture at their quilt show, and then I have a travel break until mid-September, and no other deadlines. Whoo-hoo! I'm taking a summer sabbatical. I'm not really sure what that means, other than I'm giving myself the gift of a "should-free" summer. What gets done gets done, whether it's work in the studio, gardening, spinning, knitting or simply contemplating my navel. My mother's day gift was a new hammock, and I intend to wear it out.

Really?

Can it have been more than a month since I've last posted? Honestly? I guess it would be an understatement to say that I've been busy. But a whole month? Geesh.

In the weeks since I last posted I have been to Dallas, TX, Portland, OR, Brighton, MI and Denver, Co. This Saturday I'll be teaching in St. Clair, MI. In a couple weeks it will be Duluth, MN. Who schedules these things?

The only sewing I've done has been step outs for a couple of new classes, and some mending. Mending! Hubby likes to pull the corner off of his shirt pockets. It's an engineer thing, probably due directly to the death of pocket protectors.

I have been spinning, though. It's been my quiet respite from the noisy world. It's so calming that I sometimes almost doze off. I'm making stuff that more or less would pass for actual yarn. And I've been reminded that my goal is not to try make my handspun to look like commercial yarn, because I can buy that. I still have a lot to learn. Having finally figured out how to spin fine enough to make sock weight yarn, I am struggling to get back to sweater weight yarn.  Good thing thick and thin spots are all part of the beauty of handspun yarn. (That's my story and I'm sticking with it.)

To continue my current state of crazy, I just bought a rigid heddle loom. It's just a wee thing, not a behemoth floor loom. I figure I can weave up all of this newly spun yarn faster than I could ever possibly knit it. It's another new thing to learn, with an entire new vocabulary. But I've gone from "what the heck does that mean?" to understanding the basic techniques. So far I've woven a nice set of placemats, which is sort of like buying a $XXK sewing machine to sew straight seams. Oh wait, I did that too.

Of course, all of this falderal means I now have two new stashes to make room for. Wool for spinning is light weight, but very bulky. And then there is the yarn that I've spun. My "limited" space for stashing yarn is now bubbling over into my sewing space.

The yarns for weaving come on ginormous cones. Where on earth am I going to store those? And the tools! It's a 24 inch loom, the heddles and shuttles are 26 inches long.

On the quilting front, I did manage to find 16 fat quarters to bring home from Denver. They are for a project for a special edition of Quiltmaker Magazine, which will be out in the fall. Since my deadline is mid-May, I think I'd better get cracking on that.

I think I need a fiber intervention.

To bead or not to bead

Moving along on the Of a Summer's Day quilt. Progress has been slow since being seduced by a spinning wheel, but there's progress nevertheless. Deciding how to embellish the appliques is a bit of a challenge to me. I'm not really big on glitz and glamour, but a well placed bead is a thing of beauty.

I started by leafing through an old picture book of rose botanicals, looking for just the right center treatment for my old fashion roses. Once I found the look I was after, I marked the centers with concentric circles. (A circle template from an office supply or drafting store is a marvelous thing.) The size and placement were done totally by gosh and by golly. I did make a small attempt to center the middle circle, but there was no measuring involved. The circles also varied from flower to flower.

I gathered up the tools for embellishing and set to work. Starting with straight stitches from the center to the outer ring, I used the darker variegated thread to create the stamens. I rustled up a strip of wool I had cut and stashed in my aborted stab at rug making, to create the centers.

It sat at that stage (and of course, I didn't take a picture) for several days while I wrestled with the decision between french knots and beads. I had already done french knots on the tiny yellow flowers, so adding them to the roses felt a little redundant. I worried that beads would have too much dimension and take away from the applique. In the end I realized that delica beads would be no bigger than french knots and got to work.

But now the centers still seemed to be missing something. More dimension maybe? Maybe I could use the yarn again, as I did in the basket, and stitch in a little trapunto under the wool centers.

I don't know why this little bag of felt balls was lying out on my table, but there it was. Hmmm. First I had to work through the thought that it wasn't okay to cut these little gems into smaller curves. Perhaps there are felt ball police who make rules about these things. It could happen! But I got over that.

There you go, now we're talking. The little burst of green in the center of all that red, perfect! Next I had to decide how to attach it. I could use a permanent fiber glue, which would preserve the roundedness of the center, but I just couldn't bring myself to glue something to a quilt. I know other people do it, but it's just not really for me. Besides, the bubble of felt looked too fake to me.

 So, stitching it down was the way to go. I used a dab of the glue I use for applique to hold it in place, a slightly darker green floss and a simple running stitch. I like how the stitches create yet another circle. (Yeah, the appliques are covered with glue. It will likely rub off while I'm stitching the appliques to the background and then quilting the snot out of it.)

Next step is to add veins to the petals. I've used two strands of a six strand floss, and I'm not sure if I like it. The lines feel a little too pronounced. I may try a single strand, or I may add the veins when quilting, or, I might just keep going as is. These things must be done del.i.cate.ly, my pretties!

Spinning my wheel

I've been bitten, bitten hard. Everyone needs a hobby, right? When my quilting hobby became my job, I needed to find something new to do, just so I wasn't working all the time.

I've been a fiber maniac my whole life. From four on, when my grandmother taught me how to embroider, I have spent my entire life either playing with fiber or figuring out how to get more fiber. One thing I had never done was spin wool into yarn.

In my down time I've been hanging out at Twisted Warps and Skeins, playing with their assortment of spinning wheels.There are so many factors to consider before choosing a wheel. Just as in quilting, spinning has a vocabulary of its own. While Pam and Dale tried to convince me to take my time before making a purchase, I just knew that I needed to have a wheel at home to be able to practice in a quiet space.

They had me spend some time on this used wheel, an Ashford Traveller, then offered it to me at an awesome price, and it became mine.

This is the first yarn that I spun. It's pretty much a disaster. Too thick in some spots and too thin in others, and over twisted throughout. I was just going to dump it, it's a small expense, just about the cost of a yard of fabric, and I figured I'd learned everything I needed to learn out of that fiber. But no, Dale said I had to take it home.

So I turned it into "art yarn". I've finally found a use for the crock pot that the men in the family despised. Several packs of Kool Aid, and a soak in the pot for a bit, and now I've dyed my first yarn. It's just crazy yarn, and I'm thinking I'll knit it up with ginormous needles and then felt it, perhaps into a seat cover for my desk chair. Or, something cozy to toss into Gracie's crate.

Learning something entirely new has been good for my soul. It has reminded me of how lost one can be when learning a new process, how terms that are second nature to us can be mysterious and confusing to beginners. It's given me something to be bad at, and yet enjoy the process of getting better. As I always say, anything worth doing is worth doing badly for as long as it takes.

Four Backgrounds

While I still have some embellishing to do, it's time to settle down into choosing a background. Usually I just know what I want to do, and just go ahead and do it. This time, not so much.

This is the pieced background. It's more blue than the photo, but the darker accent fabric does have a grey undertone. I'm just not feeling it. It seems as though the background can't stand up to the vibrant colors of the applique. What do you think?

This is choice number two. I love the print, but I think the fabric is just a little too purple.I fear that the purple larkspurs would be completely lost. So the question becomes, do I keep the background and make the larkspurs over in blues?

What do you think of this one? I only did a close up because the flash was washing it out. (Yet another dark and grey day here, with six inches of fresh snow over night.)

While I like the silveryness of it, it also feels a little underwhelming compared to the appliques. So, do I want a quiet place for the applique to shine, a background that truly fades into the background? This fabric would give the whole piece a bit of understated elegance.



And then there's this background.

Wowsers! I am really, really liking this. I like the linear, yet curvy print. It reminds me of a tin ceiling, only on drugs. The flash has washed out the color a bit around the applique, and I like that effect. I'm going to see if I can mimic that with pastels or water color pencils.

I can imagine following the print on the fabric for machine quilting, it would give it a tufted appearance, especially if I put a small something in the centers of the tiniest squares, like a bead, maybe?

Can you help me choose? Really, I'd love your opinion. Shall I go for a quiet or bold background? Beaded background, really?

Machine Finished Hand Applique!

At last! All can be revealed! The super secret project that has kept me busy since Thanksgiving is ready.

 

After months of preparation, almost as intensive as writing a book, I spent several days in January at the studios in Denver, Colorado, taping my first online class with Craftsy.

 

Even though I've already tons of time in front of a camera (two Simply Quilts shows, too many to count episodes with Kaye Wood and even a show with Alex and Ricky), I was still nervous. Of course I was, I have a great face for radio. But, my terrific crew put me right at ease. Even though we worked very hard, it was at a stress-free pace.

 

I'm hoping that you will find this online class to be (almost) as good as taking a class from me. (I couldn't be quite as silly as I usually am in class, I do the jokey stuff while the students are busy working. Just imagine that I'm telling stories between the lessons.) As I watched the class for the first time yesterday, I was thrilled at how it all turned out. Even my make-up looked great, but of course it would, their make-up artist is Danica Jardien, who has made some very famous people look great on screen. The camera does add weight, though, in my case about fifty pounds.

Edit: The link for the discount is now disabled, but the class is still available. Craftsy has sales regularly, so you still may find it at a discount by going to here.

If you'd like to sign up for the class, click here for a 50% discount on the regular class fee. It's a limited time offer (I'll switch the link back to regular price on Feb. 28), so shop early and often!

 

Honestly, I have to admit to being a big fan of Craftsy. Being pathologically curious, I have signed up already for about a dozen classes. These are no choppy You Tube videos, they are high quality, well designed video classes, providing excellent instruction for less than the cost of a workshop at a conference. I enjoy watching the classes on my tablet while I'm poking along on my applique.

 

For me, these classes are the perfect answer for someone who loves teaching but doesn't love the travel. I have already sent in a proposal for a piecing class. We'll see if they like it.

 

 

 



Announcements, announcements

We all hate announcements. (A little flashback to my Den Mother days.)

Coming up, in just about a month, I'll be teaching at Quiltmaker's Block Party event. It looks to be just tons of fun, with a cast of terrific characters in the teacher line-up. Click here to find out more about the party in Portland, Or. Read my original blog post to see the special applique project I'll be teaching.

Also, check out the latest issue of Quilters Newsletter's Best Fat Quarter Quilts. I have a project on page 58. It is on the newsstands now, and can even be purchased as an ezine! I'm a big fan of ezines, no more piles of magazines that have only been read once, no more guilt about tossing them out.

Anyway, My Momma's Garden is a fun-to-piece quilt and a great stash buster, my kind of quilt.





In other news, I have been to Georgia and back, visiting with the Hall County Quilt Guild, a trip that I thoroughly enjoyed. And then I spent a week feeling rather yucky. No, I didn't get the miserable cold from anyone in Georgia (there was no kissing on the lips!), but it did knock me off my pins for several days. I even spent an entire day in my pajamas, which for me is just about one step away from hospitalization. I didn't even knit!

The progress on Of a Summer's Day is slow, but steady. I've done all the machine stitching on the motifs, so they are all put together and ready to embellish.

 

I've also sewn together my prototype background. The actual color is more of a cheerful, clear blue, not so gray, and the contrast between the two fabrics is not so pronounced.

 

As an experiment, I've pressed the seams open. Usually I have an accent fabric that I want to emphasize. This time I wanted the two fabrics to be equal. It will be interesting to work on a flatter surface, to see how the light plays with the quilting design.

I'm still on the fence, but I won't decide until I've laid out more of the applique. Most of the background will be covered. What do you think? Stitching everything to the background is the last step, so I still have plenty of time to change my mind, perhaps even repeatedly.

I've added some trapunto to the basket. Using a doubled strand of some white worsted-weight yarn, I added some oomph to the skinny, upright staves of the basket. It's pretty subtle now, but I think it will really show up once it's quilted. I've also added a layer of batting behind the rim and the base of the basket. I used fusible fleece from Floriani, which hold much better than just a smear of glue. Still trying to decide if I want to add some embroidery. I think I probably will.