Off to London!

I am off to London tomorrow to visit Don.  I have 2 pages of names and addresses of places I want to see (museums, shops, and gardens), hear (tickets for concerts at Westminster Abbey and St Martin in the Field), eat (everything), touch (fabric and roman ruins) and smell (the fish and flower markets).  It will be a fun 2 weeks. I'll post pictures.  

Quilting on Several Fronts

I have been making the mini quilts and handquilting them.  I have the 2 from the last post completely done and handed off for the guild quilt show in April.  There is one with most of the quilting complete and two that have been pieced, but need quilting.  I have made 2 more baby quilts and long arm quilted them.  I have finished most of the appliqué on the "be thankful" quilt and finished the binding on the Bonnie Hunter Easy Street in time for it to go into the guild quilt show.  I have started another queen sized quilt in a modern style for a gift.  Pictures are coming soon and I am quilting with a vengeance.  

Still Hand Quilting/Hand Appliqueing

Slow, slow, slow.  Nothing much to show for it, but it is getting done.  

Miniature and much more precision than I thought was possible

These are at least miniature for me...  I admired a little quilt at guild on Friday.  My friend had joined a group at one of the local quilt shops and was going to make a little quilt every month for a year using Jo Morton fabrics.  I was intrigued because the pieces were so tiny.  I went to the first class yesterday.  These aren't really my usual colors or style, but I wanted to see if I could do it...

The little pinwheels are 1" across and the entire piece is about 11"x12".  The trick there was to make bigger pinwheels, starch and press them, and then trim them down to size.   The pieces would be way to little to actually make the pinwheels the proper size.  The inside square is also 1" in the squares in a square quilt and that one is about 13" x 13".  These were fun, though a bit time consuming, to make.  (I know I could have made a bed sized quilt in almost the same time.)  These are just the tops, I'll probably hand quilt to finish them.  I'm going to do a series and hang them together.  

Hand Work

I've finished hand quilting the 1" diagonal lines and flowers in the Tropical Flowers quilt.  I would like to quilt a couple more lines between each of those diagonal lines and then decide if I want to do diamonds or just diagonal lines.  I'm also hand appliquéing the stems and berries on the be thankful quilt.  I have finished the piecing, the borders, the freehand letters, and the stems in the basket.  I have to do the border appliqué and the buds on the stems.  Slow work, but the Tropical Flowers is turning out well, and the be thankful quilt will be perfect for my bedroom, where it will remind me every day to be thankful.    

Baskets this week

Wow this photo is funky.  I really don't have a blue light in the florida room...

The acrylic base in this basket is made with one of mom's brazillian agates.  I made 20 of them or so for my basket guild.  I used dyed reed with a continuous weave base and a woven rim.  Everyone's baskets turned out really nicely.

This is a project from a Pat Sloan pattern that was started last weekend at a weekend quilting retreat at a  friend's house.  I took this pattern, a handful of blues, greens, browns and all the light gold/yellow that I had.  It took a fabric store run to get the rest of the background fabrics, but I finished the backgrounds on Friday.  I pieced the baskets and started appliqueing them to the backgrounds on Saturday.  I finished them this week and still need to piece and applique the borders, but I'm getting closer and I think it will look lovely in my bedroom.

I finished the long arming on Easy Street this afternoon too, so will bind tomorrow and take photos this week.  It turned out well and that is good because I want to hang it in my guild quilt show in April.  I have also spent several hours hand quilting this weekend.  The vacuuming did not get done...no time,  hmmm.  Wonder why? 

Easy Street, the Flimsy

Hard to see on my brown flannel board, but the outside is a 5 1/2" black piece.  I literally used every lime, turquoise, and purple scrap that I had in order to piece the middle border.  It's big, 102" x 102", and it will go on the longarm just as soon as it is fixed.  H got another part today, hopefully this one does the trick and I'm back on the machine.

On the other hand, I'm still hand quilting on the tropical flowers.

I need another project, string star or more appliqué?  And I have a basket going too.  More about that later.