Baby Steps

Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after another. –Walter Elliott, The Spiritual Life

It might be baby steps I'm taking with the Pinwheel Sampler, but at least I'm moving forward . Which leads me to say that what I'd like most for Christmas is about six more hours in a day to spend quilting. If only I didn't have to sleep. Anyway, I'm quilting this quilt one color of thread at a time. I've finished with the light pink and the tan and some blocks only have the ditch-work done and others are finished. I thought this was a fun start to the quilting in this block.

Here's another block in progress. I like the way the tan thread stands out against the ivory background. The swirls are a little wonky because I had to stretch them a little to get them to fit evenly around the pinwheels. Still, they're pretty cute.

You've seen this block before. I love the colors in it. This block is finished, unless I decided to spend some time with Mr. S. Ripper. I used the tan thread for the accent quilting around the star points and also in the star points. It matches the brown fabric perfectly, so you can't see the quilting. I haven't decided if I'm going to pull the quilting out and do the star points with chocolate brown thread and the flourishes in off-white. I'm not quite sure how I feel about my wonky stitching in the flourishes being so visible. I like the idea of the quilting, just, perhaps not the color of thread. Then again, I may just leave it as-is.

This is another block you've seen and another favorite among the blocks. Last time I showed it to you, it was missing the swirls in the brown frame. Love how this one came out, but the curlicues in the pinwheel are invisible because the thread matches the fabric. I'm thinking about pulling those out and doing them in dark pink thread so they will show up better.

This block was scary and fun all at the same time. The leaves are something I haven't tried before. Some are pretty OK and others are, well, not-so-great. It depended on the direction I was going how nice they came out and going certain directions required me back-tracking to get the vines right and others didn't. That is kind of noticeable, again, because of the tan thread.

I'm read to start quilting with the dark pink thread, followed by the chocolate brown. After that, I'll put the ivory back on and stitch filler patterns into several blocks and do the design in the sashings. Still lots of work ahead, which also means lots of fun quilting time.

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