Oak Leaf Applique and Kids

I have not been blogging, but I have been busy.  This was spring break week for the kids' colleges and they both went out of town to visit their sisters and then spent a couple days at home and Chrissy brought her housemate too.  It was a lot of fun.  We went to Detroit and the Eastern Market yesterday, drove around Belle Isle and down Jefferson so she could see where they made the Chrysler commercial.  We had lunch at PF Changs and walked around Somerset eating Godivas.  Chrissy drank Starbucks again and again, since she can't get it up north.  But back to school today... 
The Oak Leaf Applique
I started this applique about a month ago.  I was thinking about maybe hand quilting a whole cloth  quilt when I saw this style in an old magazine.  I loved the oak reels and with big spaces between them, I'll have lots of room for fancy hand quilting.  The blocks are 25" with a 2" green border and a 5" white border.  (It's amazing how big and white 25x25" blocks can be when you are going to fill them up with stitches.)  I used white Kona muslin for the background and 1948 Roses by Maywood Studios for the varigated green applique and border.  It does have a fairly distinctive rose pattern in the green, but it was exactly the shades of green that I was looking for and I don't think it bother me when it's done.  I'm going to wash and dry it so I understand how it shrinks and then hand quilt it.  When it's done, I'm thinking about maybe tea dying it to give it a more vintage look and take some of the whiteness out of the background.  The next step is to decide on quilting patterns.  This one will take some real time.  Postscript...thanks to Harold for holding it for the photo (it was starting to snow).