Quilting practice

Hello all, and welcome to the weekend! Where did this week go?

I spent most of the week outside, cleaning up in the garden, planting some annuals, and trying to get ahead of the weeds. We went from bare earth to uncontrollable jungle in about two weeks, so right now I'm afraid the weeds are winning. Those suckers have amazing survival skills to have come up again after the winter we had.

When I wasn't outside, I was working on quilting up the small pieces I had piled up. It was fun, for the most part.  The first thing you should know is that I am a total and complete amateur at this. I am constantly amazed that anything that I attempt comes out of the machine looking acceptable at all. To make sure I get a decent result, I use stencils, quarter-inch tape, quilting paper, and anything else that can help me get a decent design stitched in.  Here is the first project to show you what I mean:

This is a little quilt made out of extra half-square triangles. To get ready to quilt it, I basted it and then traced a leaf pattern into very thin quilting paper, which I pinned to the center with straight pins. I also traced a stencil in the border, which doesn't show up in the picture too well. Here's a close-up of the quilting paper:

Then it's just a matter of stitching along the lines and tearing away the paper. Here is the result:

And here is a close-up of the quilting of the same corner shown above:

 Success! I even put the binding on it. This is my happy finish for the week.

Another piece that got quilted was the bright child's quilt that I showed earlier this week.

I don't mind telling you that I went to battle with this one. I just did channel quilting on it, and if I had tried anything else I would have given up completely. It was just too big for me to comfortably handle. We wrestled, but I won! It turned out pretty well. The lines here are about an inch apart and took forever. Plus a LOT of thread. This was done with a walking foot. I drew the first line so that it was straight, but the others were done with the little spacing bar that attaches to the foot.

This one is just outline quilted:

This is from a Kim Schaefer calendar quilts pattern and has been hanging around waiting since last year. Oops. As you can see, I started to draw in some feathers to practice quilting those, but I chickened out. I probably will find a design to trace for the feathers and then quilt those in. It looks pretty good with just outlines, but I could use the practice.

The last one is partially done:

This little banner is made of orphan blocks from a quilt I started but gave up on. It was a block of the month at a shop near here a couple of years ago. I hated the fabric, so I never made the rest of the blocks and eventually gave the rest of it away. If you look closely, you can see that I just did some meandering and put in a few details on the houses. My bobbin ran out partway through the right side, so I quit for a while and will go back and finish that.

That was my quilting week! It was fun, but I am ready to get back to piecing. I plan to finish the Fiesta pinwheels quilt next week so I am looking forward to that. One more picture to send everyone into the weekend:

The irises are blooming! Have a great weekend, everyone!

Linking up with Sarah and Amanda and Thank Goodness It's Finished Friday. By the way, while you are at Sarah's blog, scroll down and look for her posting of the Tennessee block for the AMB blog tour. It's awesome!

Basting and prepping

(Today's post is a bit late because we're having "Internet connectivity issues." You'd think they would have figured most of this stuff out by now.)

Have you ever taken any hand sewing out with you and worked on it in public? This weekend we went to the ballpark and I took a hexie project with me to stitch on during the game. I really like baseball, but four hours sitting at the park? That's a LOT. I got pretty far along on this project:

I had the rosettes made and joined them up with the white hexies during the game.  As you can see, I worked on it in two pieces because the bigger one just got too big to handle in that tiny seat. People kept making comments (mostly nice comments), and the only real problem I had was that it got all wrinkly and a little dirty because I was crazy enough to take white to a baseball game. I should know better.

In case you ever want to take your sewing somewhere, here is the best tip I ever got: thread a bunch of needles on to a full bobbin, like this:

This way you don't have to try to see to thread a needle and can just pull off a length and the needle is already threaded. This and a pair of tiny scissors and you're all set! You can tape the thread end to the bobbin, but I just wound my thread back on and it stayed just fine. A zip lock bag is a good idea, though.

Today is basting and prepping day because later today and tomorrow I plan to quilt up all the little projects that I have laying around waiting to be quilted. This weekend I cleaned up in the sewing room (I even vacuumed!) and there were more than I thought, so it's time to get those finished up. I don't have a fancy quilting machine, but I do have this:

 

This was my mother-in-law's machine that I inherited when she passed away last year. She bought it new in 1968. We miss her terribly, but this machine is a fantastic gift that she left for me. This is the best machine I have ever sewn on. Really. It has a perfect stitch and is a joy to use. And 8 inches of throat space! This is a lot of space in comparison with my more modern machines. The only thing that I don't like about it is that it weighs about a thousand pounds. Okay, only 33 pounds. It's all cast iron and not really what I would call "portable." But the great sewing on it more than makes up for that one problem.

This is one of the quilts I'll be finishing up:

(Ironing board shadow in the corner!)

 It's about 45 inches square. To get it ready, I am basting it to the backing and batting. I only pin-baste when I have very small (less than 12 inches square) things to stitch, and I never use basting spray. I don't want glue in my quilt. The pins are. . .well, I just find them a mess to work with. They're hard for me to put in and harder to take out while sewing. I just don't like them, so I hand-baste using a big needle and hand-quilting thread to make big stitches, like this:

I think you can see those. It's a big running stitch made about every 5 or 6 inches across the quilt. The hand-quilting thread is easy to take out and you can sew right over it. Hand basting is easy, but it does take some time. I think it's completely worth it, though.

So, that's what I'm doing today. I have at least 7 projects to prep, so I better get started! Hope you're having fun, either in the sewing room or out in the sunshine!

Linking with Connie at Freemotion by the River and Judy at Patchwork Times again. Come on over and take a look!

Cleaning up

It's been a very busy cleaning week here. Just how does everything get so dirty, and how do I not notice it all winter long? I'm blaming the sunshine. It just brightens everything so that I can see the dirt. Even in the corners!

As part of my cleanup, I finally put the bindings on these two quilts, so now they are finally completely finished. The first is this one:

(I always wondered why bloggers put their quilts out on the grass. Now I know--there's no place else that's big enough!)

This quilt is made from traditional Lady of the Lake blocks in various batiks that I had laying around. The border kind of blends into the grass, but it's a batik as well. Those fabrics and some triangle paper made this super easy. The block pattern was in one of Judy Martin's block books, and it was super easy as well. I am really pleased with how it turned out.

This next one was a block-of-the-month from 2010 (!), which I just finished this week.

I sewed most of the blocks in 2010, and then hit a snag and put it away. (I'm sure that no one else has ever done that.) I pulled it out again earlier this year and just finished the binding, only four years later. I wasn't sure about the dark green block frames and inner border, but it works. I used that same dark green as the binding. I'm pretty pleased with this one too!

For anyone who's been following along, I am STILL working on Celtic Solstice, a tiny bit at a time. I am actually making progress, so I have high hopes of finishing it soon.  The pattern calls for a border that I won't be using in my quilt, but I had already made the units, so yesterday I found something else to do with them.

These are tri-recs units put together to make these pinwheel-type blocks. (I've been calling them "kick" blocks, because they look to me like they're kicking.) When they're all together like this, I think they look like flowers. I'm thinking of a pink sashing and a floral border:

Won't this be a cute quilt for a little girl? I have enough of the tri-recs units for 24 blocks, but I have more cut, so I may end up making a few more to make it bigger since these finish at 6 inches. I think this counts as using up green scraps, don't you?

I've also started cutting for the Fiesta Pinwheels quilt. I chose this color distribution, with the red center:

I think it's going to be very festive! And it's certainly cheerful to work on, no doubt about that.

Hope everyone has a lovely Memorial Day weekend! We are supposed to have terrific weather, and we'll be spending Memorial Day at the ballpark. It should be fun!

Linking up with Sarah and Amanda and Angela again. It's a holiday weekend, so lots of time for you to check out everyone's projects!

See you on Tuesday!

Fiesta pinwheels

It should not surprise anyone that it is raining here yet again. Just showers, not a storm, but I can't be the only one who's tired of it all. The good news is that it did not rain on commencement, so it was a great day for our graduates and their families. I end this school year grateful for my colleagues, my friends, and my students. I don't know how I got lucky enough to work at a job I love with people I really respect.

The rain has also made the garden EXPLODE, mostly with weeds, so we spent a bunch of time cutting grass, pulling weeds, seeding bare patches, and yanking out the tiny trees that have grown from chestnuts and such that the squirrels buried and forgot. It was a good, though tiring, weekend.

So now it's back to sewing! I am taking the rest of May to recover from the semester, so I will have some extra time to sew. (And clean. And maybe paint the family room.) I was looking around the sewing room this weekend (no, I wasn't cleaning! don't be silly!) and I pulled out this book:

This book is by Amy Ellis, who I just found out also blogs over at Amy's Creative Side. (I must be the last to know this.) This is a fantastic book! I love every pattern in here, in spite of my very mixed feelings about "modern" quilts. The quilts in this book are very creative and done mostly with simple shapes and easy sewing. No set-in seams or anything like that. I have a plan to make the cover quilt, but for now I am drawn to this one:

Digital pinwheels! A great pattern that will make a very nice quilt.

So. . .I love the patterns, but I am not much of a neutrals person. Making 30 beige and tan pinwheels would put me straight to sleep. So I dug out these fun fabrics:

Wow, that will wake you up, won't it? I have enough of the yellow for the background, and made some sample blocks to determine how to use the other colors. This is option 1:

Looks good! Here is option 2:

Hmmm. Could be a better picture, but I like the block. Option 3:

I like them all! I don't know if I can choose a color scheme; they're all so good. What if I put them all together?

Whoa. Party in the sewing room! About as far from neutrals as I can get, I think.

The yellow makes a great background color for this quilt. At first I was sure that I liked the turquoise center best, but now I'm leaning toward the red center. Or maybe all three colors together, because there are 30 blocks and that would allow for an even distribution of colors. I'm not sure! If you'd like to help me out, please leave me a comment.

I may not be sure about the exact color scheme, but I know that I'm planning to call this Fiesta Pinwheels. I think that name says it all. It kind of reminds me of Fiesta ware, the very colorful dishes that I wish I owned.

That's what I'm working on this week! Hope you are working on something festive as well!

Linking up with Judy at Patchwork Times and  Linky Tuesday and Show and tell Tuesday! Stop by and join the fun!

Scrap happy

Whew! It has been a long week. Why does everyone seem to think smashing in "one more thing" would be good and helpful? There's not enough week to do it all. But we all lived through it!

Along with managing all my "stuff," I finished the Vin du Jour project this week.

 I used a piano key border, and that made me remember why I don't do piano key borders very often. Holy cow, those corners gave me fits! I first made them and they were way too big, then I remade them and they were still too big, and then I finally just trimmed them down so that they fit the border. I should have just made miters, but I thought that would take too long. I am really happy with the way it turned out and really, really pleased that I used those scraps. I have four 2 inch squares of the yellow left, along with some random strings of the other fabrics. That's it! Good use of fabric, wouldn't you say?

Not sure if I will quilt this myself or take it to the longarmer. It's about 49 by 49, right at the edge of what I feel comfortable quilting on my machine. Plus, the border is pretty stretchy, so I will probably take it to Diane. I guess I made up my mind while typing that sentence.

I also made my green triangle blocks for the Rainbow Scrap challenge:

It was very gray outside when I took this picture, so I think that affected the colors. The one on the left is not nearly as light as it appears in the picture.  Here they are with all their colorful friends:

This will be a pretty quilt! I like it already.

Since May's color is green, I think I might find something to do with this strip set:

This was a "candy bar" set I got from my local quilt shop quite a while ago. I'll bet I can think up something fun to do with it. Any ideas?

Everyone have a good weekend! We will have commencement and such to do, then I really have to do some heavy cleaning around here. Maybe I'll even clean the sewing room. Who knows what I'd find there? The only sewing I'll get to do is garment sewing. Why don't workout clothes have pockets? I need them!

Linking to Sarah, Amanda, and Scrappy Saturday again. You should go on over and take a look at the great eye candy!

Tied in knots

Not a lot of time for sewing the last couple of days. After all the rain we've had we had some water in our basement. I hate it when that happens! Plus, we had some spectacular thunder and lightning Monday night and lost power for a little bit. I know some people sew on their treadle machines when that happens, but mostly I just take a nap. We ended up with 3 1/2 inches of rain, so no wonder it got into the basement.

Has anyone experienced the new weather alerts that some carriers send over your cell phone? We never signed up for them, but that night our phones just kept shrieking with severe weather alerts. I turned mine off after a while, but my husband has to keep his on for work, so it just kept going off. It was like our own personal alarm. I understand the need for this, but it was very annoying. Especially when it was interrupting my nap. And then later it just kept going off, even at 2 and 3 in the morning.

Anyway, I did manage to make these:

These are 6-inch blocks. The pattern is traditionally called Arrowhead Puzzle, but I got the pattern from Bonnie Hunter's Quiltmaker column, where she called them Garlic Knots. I've been calling them that ever since. (A link is HERE, but you can't get the pattern without paying for the magazine. Check some block books, because it is a traditional block pattern.) I was half planning to make these for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, but I lost interest. I had them cut out, though, and it was time to get those pieces off the cutting table. So I guess this was a clutter-clearing exercise.

I also started putting this runner together:

This is a simple runner for the top of the small buffet we have in the dining room.  I won the colorful fabric squares at a guild meeting, and just sewed them into 4 patches (a quilting patch which I now officially dislike) and am assembling them into a runner that will fit the top. Not exciting, but another little quilt for the house.

Once I finish this runner, I will have something like 6 or 7 small projects stacked up to quilt, so it looks like next week I will have to get to that.  One of the pieces is from Thanksgiving, so I think I'm overdue.

Everyone have a great Wednesday. I have yet another meeting, but this one comes with a catered lunch. Yum!

Linking up with WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced. I got her book for Mother's Day and am really looking forward to making a few of those quilts! (Book link is for information only; I'm not making any money here.)

Rhubarb rescue

Many months ago, I acquired this quilt top with a request to "rescue" it and make it useful.

The pink is an unusual color that I'm not sure I've ever seen.  It's not bubble gum, not light, not exactly dark. I've been calling it rhubarb. The light areas were simply muslin, very fragile in some spots. It was also huge--it started out about 85 by 110. I was told that it was made by a friend's mother at least 30 years ago and was hidden in a closet after she died. (I think it was a good bit older than 30 years, based on the condition of the muslin.) The family wanted to be able to use it and remember mom. On further inspection, though, I suspect there was a reason why it was in the closet. This quilt was not made by one person, it was made by many, and many of them did not know what they were doing. Most of the pieces were hand-pieced, but some were sewn on a machine. Some of the hand-pieced ones were pieced with hand quilting thread, the heavier waxy thread that I have never known how to use. I use it for basting because it's easy to pull out. Do I have to say that there was no such thing as a standard seam allowance anywhere in this quilt?

There were also other problems:

Holes!

 And this:

Is that blood? I think so!

So, there were many troubles to be dealt with here. I thought of it as a challenge.  Since I had no more of the original fabric, and the quilt was way too big anyway, I ended up cutting a good part of it away, saving the best part for a new center, then using some of the discarded pieces to repair what would be the main section of the refurbished quilt. It seems like cutting away a lot, but I was following the quilt pattern in order to preserve as much as possible. There was also some rearranging to keep the blocks correctly oriented. I also tightened up as many of the seams as I could, and re-cut the borders to fit the new size. Then, just to stabilize the old fabric and make sure the quilt held together, I basted it all to an extra-wide piece of new white muslin. It was finally flat and stable, with no more bloodstains! Then my good friend the longarmer took over the challenge, and quilted a butterfly panto on it. She did a great job!

I had my doubts during the whole process, but it turned out great! Here it is on a bed:

Yay! It looks good!

This finished at about 72 by 72. I think I managed to save the best parts, which to my mind were the pattern and the unusual pink color. I wish I could have saved more of it, maybe to put together a smaller quilt or a wall hanging, but what I discarded was really fit for nothing more than the trash. I'd like to think that this still honors the original quilt makers, even if it's not exactly what they originally constructed.

I'm calling this a successful rescue! Hope everyone has a great week.  Mine will be filled with meetings and final paperwork, then commencement this weekend. Then we can all recover from the emotional upheaval of the semester.

If I remember, I will link this to Connie's Linky Tuesday tomorrow.  With the mushy state of my brain right now, though. . .here's hoping you all have a clear-headed day!

To see what others are doing today, check out Patchwork Times. 

More Vin du Jour

I may have said this last time, but it has been a very stressful week. I really dislike giving final, high-stakes exams. I just don't think a large part of assessment should ride on one test. The rules say we have to have an exam, though, so I give exams that aren't a huge part of the grade for students. You would think this would be less stressful, but it isn't, because everything has to be completed in a very short time, especially for graduating seniors. So lots and lots of anxiety on all sides this week. Thank goodness it's Friday, and the last exam is over.

Working on my little scrap project kept me sane this week, but I did not finish the quilt completely. I did finish the center, though! Here it is:

Not bad for a bag of scraps! These blocks are really big. This measures about 37 by 37 already. One reason I didn't finish it is that I haven't got any large pieces left for a border. I kind of like it without a border at all, but I do think a border will set off the stars in the center. So I need to make a piano key border to use up the small pieces I have left. That would be a good use of the fabric and a nice finish, I think. I have just enough of the yellow to make either a small inner border or a binding. Not sure which one is the best use of the yellow. I'm thinking the small border, but I might change my mind.

As I said last time, this pattern (found HERE with tons of other free patterns) looks complicated but really isn't. Big pieces and easy shapes, even though it doesn't look like it in the finished product. One thing I found really useful is to cut a pattern for the circles out of freezer paper and iron it onto the pieced stars before trimming them into a circle. This works a lot better than trying to draw or trace the circle and then cut it out. Less chance of scissors slipping. Also, when putting the frames on the circle, stitch with the circle on top. That way the feed dogs can ease the frames just a tiny bit, just enough so that everything fits right. (If you want some more tips on the pattern, check out the earlier post. It really is a good pattern and not very difficult.)

I really do love these fabrics, and I'm really glad I saved them (for several years!) for just the right project. I also think this was the right pattern to finally use them in. But can I complain one more time about the waste? LOTS of waste in this pattern! Good thing I use white scraps all the time!

Anyway, that's where I am right now. I'll be grading (and grading. . .) this weekend, so not a lot of time to sew. I don't really sew much on the weekends, anyway, because there's a lot to do, and it's really the only time the hubster and I have together. Weird, I know. If I get a chance, though, I will be cutting my way through this:

This is a bin of small scraps just waiting to be cut into 1 1/2 and 2 inch squares. I should be able to find some time for that, right?

Everybody have a great weekend! Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there, especially the new moms. You're all doing a great job, and don't let anybody tell you different!

Linking to Sarah and Amanda again. Go check out everyone's great projects!

Vin du Jour

It's a very stressful and busy week here. Final exams, final papers, grading, more grading, meetings. . .it's a lot to pack in to one week. To keep me sane, I am working on a pattern that I thought would be easy enough and still engaging enough to let my mind rest a bit. I always stress a lot over final grades, so I need to do something to get my mind off it for a while. The pattern is Vin du Jour, a free pattern from Moda fabrics which you can find and download HERE. Even if you don't go there for this pattern, there are a ton of other free patterns there, so it's worth checking out.

I thought that making a few blocks from this pattern and then creating a small wall hanging would be great for some scraps I saved that I really love.  They are the scraps from this quilt:

The fabric is Portugal by April Cornell. I just loved this fabric so much, especially the yellow. This quilt hung in my office for a while, and I think I may hang it again this fall.  It just makes me happy to look at it. I had a good-sized pile of scraps from this one, and I saved them all together. When I saw the Vin du Jour pattern I knew this was the place to use them. It just seemed right.

This makes some really pretty giant blocks (18 inches!), but it's a weird pattern. First of all, it calls for a really expensive and limited-use ruler to make the center of the block. Since I own enough pieces of plastic, there's no way I was doing that.  I just made a kaleidoscope block, like this:

I paper-pieced mine, but there are a lot of different ways to make it. (It's a 6 inch finished block.) Just be sure to use white in the corners so that the pattern finishes out correctly in the larger block. You could even use a solid piece of fabric and just "snowball" it by adding triangles to the corners to create an angled snowball block if you didn't want to piece it. After making the center, the pattern has you make quarter square triangles and cut part of them off, like this:

Okay. A little odd, but it does work. I don't know how you'd get the final design otherwise, really. Then there are frames for the block (more waste!) and then the center is cut into a circle and the frames are joined to it. It sounds complicated, and it looks a little scary in the pattern, but it isn't really. Just takes some attention--and pinning. You end up with this really pretty block:

Isn't that a nice design? I like it. It is giant, though, so I only have enough scraps to make four blocks, which will be plenty big enough for a wall-hanging or table-topper. I may have to make a piano-key border, though, or something similar, because I don't have big pieces left after cutting everything.

One thing about this pattern--there is a LOT of waste. I cut up a whole yard of white fabric for the backgrounds, and that's just for four blocks! I ended up cutting off a lot of it to make the circles, plus what I lost in cutting for the frames and lopping off the quarter-square triangles. Good thing I was using scraps! If I had used new fabric I would have been really mad. Fabric is too expensive to waste that much of it. Pattern designers, are you listening?

Anyway, that's what I'm doing to save my sanity during the next few stressful days. I hope to finish it by Friday, just after the last exam. We're having thunderstorms today, which seems to suit everyone's mood, especially the students'. It will all be over soon.

Everyone have a good Wednesday. I am going to link up with Lee at Freshly Pieced. She gave a presentation at our local quilt shop and her Wavelength quilt is outstanding! Hop on over and have a look!

Weekend wonders

Hello everyone. Hope you all had a great weekend.

This weekend I got to go here:

Every year Nancy's has a big warehouse sale with vendors and classes and the whole nine yards. Usually it's the first weekend in May. Some of my really good friends and I used to go every year and make a big trip of it, but they have since moved out of state, so our big trip is no more. (Not to worry--many good places to fabric shop when we visit each other!)  But the weather was really good on Saturday and my husband and I were up for a short road trip (about an hour and a half), so off we went. 

We got lunch from the American Legion veterans, conveniently located right across the street from Nancy's:

Look at how that wind was blowing! But the brats and burgers were great, not to mention the bake sale, which they wisely held inside. The hubster hung out there for a while then ran some errands while I explored here:

Lots of stuff to look at! There were some really nice bargains in those bins, plus all the vendors had their own deals. Here's what I left with after I looked at everything:

It doesn't look like much, but I was really happy with it. (Not sure why it's upside down. Hmmm.)

But wait, there's more! We went driving through Beaver Dam, a nice town, in search of a walking trail, and we passed by a rummage sale. There was a sewing machine for sale out front, so how could we not stop?

I passed on the machine, and she had a lot of apparel fabric that I wasn't interested in, but I did see this:

I said, "$10 seems like a lot for an 8 year old pattern." And the woman at the sale said, "It comes with the fabric, but I don't have the batting any more, so you could have it for $8."

Wrap it up! There's more than 5 yards of fabric there!  I also got this for another $10:

She said she didn't like them. I don't know if I like them because I've never used them, but for $10 I can try! Maybe some applique? Maybe a wall quilt? Maybe some paper piecing?

So, that was my excitement for the weekend! Hope yours was good, too!

(No idea why the pictures are weird, and there doesn't seem to be a way to fix them! Any advice?)

The vintage linen project

I am happy today! I finished the vintage linen project yesterday.  Here is the finished top, about 30 by 30:

I like it so much! I took this picture this morning in between rain showers. Will we ever dry out? Or warm up?

This is not exactly how I envisioned it in the beginning. I tried several different possibilities for the center, and this is the one I liked best. I tried it first with rounded pieces for the Dresden plate, but they looked too cutesy, if you know what I mean. If you saw the earlier post on this project, you'll notice that I also had to get rid of the lighter purple that the center was originally appliqued to. The center linen piece isn't a perfect circle, and when I cut the original lavender piece into a circle it looked really bad. So I took it off and appliqued the linen piece to a white solid to give it some stability and then trimmed very close to the stitching. Then I stitched about an eighth of an inch outside that line to applique it to the center of the Dresden plate. A small tip from garment sewing if you ever find yourself needing to do this--use your zipper foot. Seriously, if you run the edge of a zipper foot along the original line of stitching you will end up with a perfectly spaced second stitching line.

The other thing I found really helpful was to block the Dresden plate "blades" before I appliqued them to the white background.

Blocking (and some Magic Sizing) made it easier to handle and made the finished product better, I think. A large part of the blades did get cut off after I appliqued the center piece, but I'm not sure what I would have done to prevent that. I used the 5-inch line on my Dresden template and ended up trimming off at least two inches. One side effect of this project is that I now want to make a whole Dresden quilt. We'll see. . .

Just two close-ups of the linen itself. My husband thinks it was stitched either by his grandmother, who died in 1963, or his Aunt Mary, who died in 1968.

Whichever woman from his family worked them, they are beautiful, and now they are out of a drawer and will be used and loved again. I'll be pondering how to quilt this, especially the center. I'm open to suggestions if anyone has any.

Looking at this piece, I'm pretty sure every "art" teacher I ever had would be appalled because I mixed blue purples with red purples willy-nilly. I think I'm happy that they would be upset about it!

Hope everyone has a great weekend! I am linking up with Sarah, Amanda, and SoScrappy again--I want to show this off!