Seven Days Without Sewing Makes One Weak

Doldrums: \ˈdōl-drəmz\
Noun
1. a spell of listlessness or despondency
2. a part of the ocean near the equator abounding in calms, squalls, and light shifting winds
3. a state or period of inactivity, stagnation, or slump

Once upon a time, about 2½ weeks ago, I kind of fell into a funk. About six weeks ago, I made a major adjustment to my schedule so that I could be around more for the Not-So-Little Bugs during summer. Overall, it has been a really positive change. I like being the first one in at work. I get a lot more done while it's quiet. And I also get to go home before everybody else; before lunch even. I think, too, that going to bed earlier {it's usually still a little bit light out} and getting more sleep has had a positive effect on how many migraines I get and how long they last {i.e., I'm having fewer and they don't hang on for days}.

I'm trying to keep this as non-whiney as possible, but what this little back-story is leading up to is that somewhere in there, I kind of lost my "me" time. And maybe a little bit of me, too. I know that making sacrifices for your kids is part of being a parent. But I kind of felt like there was a whole lot of resistance in the ranks to where I wanted to go {which, in the literal sense, was anywhere but sitting around at home staring at the screens all day}, getting up early to go to work, going to bed early so I could get up early to go to work, and trying to out-stubborn {in a happy, positive, encouraging kind of way} the reticent {or alternately defiant} Not-So-Little Bugs all combined to make me feel like I was kind of failing a little bit at life. Subsequently, not even sewing sounded fun. So for a few days, I didn't.

Going without sewing for a few days is no big deal. Sometimes you just need a little break. Going a whole week without sewing was kind of a red flag for me. I decided that I'd better get back to the machine and I started to write this post. Well, sort of. I had a clever post title {I ♥ puns}. A few more days went by and still no sewing. At around the 11^th no-sew day, it became a bit of a game and I decided to see if I could go a full two weeks without sewing. I think that was the turning point and by day 13, I was itching to do something creative. It was the 4^th of July and it is kind of my tradition to work on my Patriotic Sampler for a few days every year around this time. {I know. It would make more sense to start working on it in April so it would be finished and ready to display on the 4^th.}

I've been working on this sampler for about twelve years now. I started it when I was pregnant with LadyBug. She's eleven. It is my second oldest Ph.D, and I don't know why I don't just finish it already . I'm so close. Anyway, I decided I'd work on some of the itty, bitty paper pieced stars that go at the corners of the blocks in the sashing. It was then that I found out that my post title was more true than I knew. After the first star {which took an hour because I fussed and fiddled and unpicked a lot to try and get the stripes to line up} I was ready to quit. My sewing muscles {the mental ones that help you push through a boring/difficult/unpleasant part of a project} were seriously out of shape. I persisted, even though I didn't really want to. The non-stripey ones only took thirty minutes each. Seven down. Only twenty more to go.

Cute, no? They finish at 1". Who designed this quilt anyway?
Oh. Right. It was me.

After I'd had my fill of that, I put together one of two remaining blocks for the quilt top. It has been cut out and ready to go for, oh, I don't know. Four years now? This one is called Land of Liberty as was designed by Marcia Hohn at The Quilter's Cache. I kind of love it. Pinwheels and flying geese in the same block? It doesn't get better than that.

For the final block, I had three contenders, only two of which I can remember at the moment, so I won't even bother to tell you about the losers. I showed them to Mr. Bug and he said, hands down, this should be the final block. It is called Spiderweb Star, and it is pretty awesome. {Note: if you make this block, reverse the cutting directions for template piece C/CR.}

I also fiddled around at the old doodle pad {Microsoft Picture Manager & Microsoft Paint} and changed my sashing from tan {the same tan used for most of the block backgrounds. Yeah, not sure what I was thinking there.} to white, moved the blocks around a bit and added the flying geese border. It's kinda wild and crazy. I think it will be a little more mellow with a scrappy collection of reds and blues in the flying geese section. I'm debating about whether or not to add a border between the sashing and the geese and another on the outside of the geese. What do you think?

Block Credits:
Row 1 - left to right
The Old Red and Blue by Marcia Hohn at The Quilter's Cache
Zig-Zag Flag inspired by Karen at The Recipe Bunny
Our Eagle pattern from a BOM my mom did at her LQS

Row 2 - left & right
Glory Flag pattern from a BOM my mom did at her LQS
Crossroads traditional block

Center Section - left to right, top to bottom
Uncle Sam pattern from a BOM my mom did at her LQS
Patriot's Star {modified} at eQuiltPatterns.com
Banner Flag by Elizabeth
US Ribbon at Compuquilt
Pledge of Allegiance Embroidery by Elizabeth

Row 3 - left & right
July Fourth traditional block
54-40 or Fight {modified} or Star Shield traditional block

Row 4 - left to right
Land of Liberty by Marcia Hohn at The Quilter's Cache
Courthouse Steps traditional block
Spiderweb Star at McCall's Quilting

I Demand A Re-Count

If passion drives you, let reason hold the reins.
–Benjamin Franklin

Grace, my ever faithful sewing sidekick, is away on holiday. It will be three weeks tomorrow since I dropped her off for a nice spa retreat. I'm hoping she'll be ready for pick-up tomorrow. In her absence, I've been doing a lot of prep work on quilts I hope to someday finish. One of those prep projects is the result of a half-square triangle swap I did almost a year ago. I got my triangles-in-the-rough back about 5 months ago, and I've been pressing. A lot. Approximately 600 freshly pressed HSTs showing here:

When I put together my triangles for the swap, I formed a plan for what to do with them based on the instructions of putting together a light and a dark fabric for each set of HSTs. I actually heard “neutral and print” and was pretty meticulous with how I put them together. I did roughly the same number of HSTs of every color and split my white and off-white neutrals evenly between the two. As is always the case with swaps, there is room for interpretation and some of what I got back didn't fit in my plans. No matter. The fabrics were still really great, so I unpicked about 300 HSTs {yes, I know }, which left me with 600 orphan triangles who needed neutral buddies to become HSTs again. Enter the Go! Fabric cutter, and in a few hours, I was all set to go {yeah, I know. Bad pun, but I couldn't resist. I ♥ puns}.

I also put together a few fabrics to fill in on some of the colors I didn't get much back on and will sew those up using the triangle papers we used originally to put our HSTs together. But I'm not showing those because that passes up “particular,” “picky” and “persnickety” and crosses over into “obsessive,” “complusive” and “just plain nutty.”

As I've pressed and cut and sorted, I've been turning over ideas for how to use up 1400± 2½” HSTs. While I was getting my swap triangles done last year I saw a quilt called Triangle Confusion and decided that I wanted to do that. Now that I have the raw materials to work with I've tried a couple of Triangle Confusion layouts. I liked the explosion of triangles with all its patterns and sub-patterns. Then, just for fun, I arranged the HSTs into a more obvious pattern and put it up for an unofficial vote.

I was kind of surprised at the results. Everyone who expressed an opinion chose Diamond Illusion. Although I didn't really know which layout I favored until people started offering opinions {which is why I ask for opinions; it helps me to know what I really want}, I realized that I was leaning more towards Triangle Confusion. It was so bright and cheerful, if not somewhat frenetic. Diamond Illusion was very drab to me even though you could see a definite pattern. Perhaps here was too much brown and orange and green and not enough yellow and pink and turquoise. So I laid it out another way. What do you think?

Green was the color I'd gotten the most back from the swap, so in my first layout I used that for all the small diamonds. It just wasn't working for me. In this new version, I used a different color for each diamond and I think I like it a lot better with more color.

Triangle Confusion is still on my mind, though. I mean, there has to be some way to make it work. So I tried organizing the colors a bit more. I am totally in love with those partial diamonds. The shape is incomplete but the eye finishes it. There's still a lot going on there, though, even with an attempt to make it play nicely by using color to force the sub-patterns. Do you see the large pinwheel in the center?

Still, there is something I really like about Triangle Confusion.

As you can see, I'm still undecided on what to do with all these half-square triangles. Unless I make a king size quilt {which would require another 1700 HSTs and I've almost entirely ruled that out}, I have enough HSTs to make two nice lap-sized quilts; one Diamond Illusion and one Triangle Confusion. The only problem is that I don't have enough of some of the colors to use an even amount in both quilts. Only one of the quilts could be rainbow bright. The other one would have to be mostly green and brown and blue. I could break up the left over browns, blues and greens a bit with solid {meaning unpieced} blocks between pinwheel blocks made of the HSTs and come out with two baby quilts to donate, plus one lap-sized rainbow-y HST quilt for me {design yet to be determined}.

Or, if I decide that I absolutely have to make both a Diamond Illusion and a Triangle Confusion quilt and they both have to have a balanced amount of color, I could make more HSTs, in which case, Jeanette, a swap would definitely be in order .

And there would probably be enough left-over HSTs for a donation quilt.

Diamond Illusion or Triangle Confusion?

He puzzled and puzzed till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before. -Dr. Seuss, How the Grinch Stole Christmas

Once upon a time, I made 936 - 2½” half-square triangles for a swap. Our group used a semi-paper pieceing speed method to put together groups of twelve HSTs at a time. For each set of twelve, I used a different main print fabric and I only repeated my neutral white or off-white fabrics in two sets of twelve at most. In the end, I had 78 different sets of 12 HSTs. I kept four HSTs from each set and sent the rest off to the swap hostess. Six months later, I got a box back full of half-square triangle treasure. They sat in that same box for about 3 months, and then in a drawer in my little sewing area, just waiting to be discovered. Last Wednesday, I dropped Grace off for a three-week spa vacation, and when I got home I started pulling the papers off and pressing them open on my spiffy new ironing board cover.

As I've worked, I've been puzzling about exactly what to do with these 936 HSTs when they're all pressed. Actually, I'll have more like 1250 HST's when I'm done. I think there was some room for interpretation in the instructions, which were to pair a light and a dark for each set of HSTs. I heard “print and neutral,” and kind of formed a plan around that. Some of the HSTs I got back don't work for what I had in mind as they are, so I'm unpicking a few more than 300 of them {yes, I know } and am going cut a bunch of neutral {white or off-white} HSTs with my Go! fabric cutter {the die that came with it has the perfect triangles} and put them with the prints that I've unpicked from each other. I only have about a hundred more to unpick.

When we were in the planning stages of the swap, Candace at The Double Nickel Quilt Challenge linked a really cool quilt called Triangle Confusion to my monthly finishes linky party, and I decided that's what I wanted to do with my half-square triangles. But as I have been pressing, I've been turning over options for what to really do with these HSTs now that I'm in the process of pressing and sorting. So I laid them out in a diamond pattern to see what it would look like. I really liked it, except it lacks a bit of variety. I chose green for the small diamonds because far and away, green is the color I got back the most of. I'll probably mix it up a little if I go with this layout, but isn't this a cool design?

It is fun to look at each block close up.

As I opened each HST, I tried to guess who made it. Some were easy to guess. Others, not so much.

I love how from far away it gives the illusion that it is a series of interlocking diamonds, but close up you can see each triangle and each print.

I ♥ orange. It is a highly underrated color.

I'd really almost made up my mind to go with the Diamond Illusion layout. But just for fun, I laid out a little Triangle Confusion. You can still see the diamond pattern, which I love, but it is an explosion of color.

But you can also see, among other patterns, pinwheels intermingled with the diamonds. Pinwheels are awesome.

Time for some more close-ups. I haven't posted much lately, so it is picture overload today.

It is an interesting block design.

I'm not sure why, but I only took close-ups of three of the four blocks, so this is the last one.

In the first layout, I kept the diamonds each a single color, but I mixed the other colors in everywhere else. I wanted to know how it would effect the overall design if I paired colors in the non-diamond areas {corners} of each individual block.

It is still an interesting pattern, but not quite so much of an explosion, which I think I maybe like. I didn't notice until I was editing photos, that with the colors paired as they are it makes a secondary diamond pattern; or rather, a large pinwheel on point between the diamonds.

That has me wondering what it would look like if I paired it so that the large pinwheels were all one color. I think I might like that best of all {control freak here}, but I'll have to lay it out to see because that might suck all the joy out of Triangle Confusion. I'll probably wait until I get all those other HST's unpicked and the neutral triangles cut, though. I only have about a hundred left.

Even though my puzzler is a little sore, I'm also puzzling over what size to make this quilt. My original plan was a 6 x 8 block layout with a 1" stop border and a sawtooth border beyond that, which finishes at 54” x 70”. That's a really cozy lap-size quilt. But that will leave me with 375± extra HSTs, which I will have to use up in something else. I've pondered other sizes, right on up to a 9 x 11 layout {with no borders} which finishes at a nice 72” x 88” twin size quilt. That will require an additional 300 HSTs beyond what I'm already working with. I kind of like the idea. This quilt is scrappy and patchy and full of calicos, which makes me think of quilting at its roots — quilting out of necessity and using whatever was on hand. Of course, I'm not trying to kid anyone here. I have bins and bins of fabrics and I don't need to quilt, except for the sake of my sanity. I really want this to be a useful quilt, though, because I'm excited about it. A lap size would be used for snuggling under to watch TV or read. I don't know whose twin-size bed this quilt would go on. Maybe I should open an Etsy shop . Do you think anyone would pay $2300 for a twin-size quilt?

My next thought was to make it square. I really like square quilts. 8 x 8 finishes at 64” square. I even have enough HSTs for a 9 x 9. But then, we're almost back into the bed size quilts, at 72”. So why not go super-size and make it a king? I happen to sleep in a king size bed that needs a pretty quilt on it. But for that, I'd need another 1900 HSTs .

Anyone want to swap?

In the Pink: A Study in Pinwheels — Finished {and it's about time, too!}

It is easier to go down a hill than up, but the view is best from the top. –Arnold Bennett

At long last, quilted, bound, washed, blocked and folded neatly waiting for the right occasion to be used.

I finished the quilting last Tuesday. I washed and blocked it on Wednesday. It wasn't dry until Friday. And there was finally good light to photograph it today.

I'm sort of at a loss for words. The only ones that come to mind are . . . terminus . . . finished . . . completed . . . finito . . . done. Those are happy words.

There's really not much more to say anyway. I've pretty much said it all in the 2¾ years it has taken me to make this quilt. If you've been following along, you're probably as sick of it as I am  glad to see the backside of it  cheering with me. But just in case, here are links to all the posts about this quilt.
Inspired
Block One
Block Two
Block Two, Take Two and Take Three
Block Three
Block Four
Block Four, Redux
Block Five
Block Six
Block Seven
Block Eight
Goal to Finish - 2011 Ph.D Challenge
Name, Label and Quilting Sketches
Getting Started with the Quilting
Quilting Update: still working on Stitching in the Ditch
Working on the Free-Motion Sections
Free-Motion Update
More quilting {and unpicking} a year later, with updated quilt label
Finished Quilting in Each of the Blocks
Quilting in the Sashings
Finished and Ready to be Blocked
Blocked but Not Dry

Yeah. It's been one epic quilt in the making.

Today's post brought to you by:

Pinwheel Sampler: Quilting Inspired by . . .

To be creative, you need to be able to view things in new ways or from a different perspective. Among other things, you need to be able to generate new possibilities or new alternatives. Tests of creativity measure not only the number of alternatives that people can generate but the uniqueness of those alternatives. The ability to generate alternatives or to see things uniquely does not occur by change; it is linked to other, more fundamental qualities of thinking, such as flexibility, tolerance of ambiguity or unpredictability, and the enjoyment of things heretofore unknown. –Robert E. Franken, Human Motivation, 3rd ed.

A long time ago I read a story about a future where government experts could detect a person's talents shortly after birth. Only those who had extraordinary gifts were allowed to create. They were removed from society where they were encouraged to develop their talents free from the influence of the work other artists. The story follows a man who had prodigious musical talent. From childhood he lived with his caregiver in a secluded cabin in the woods, and his companion ensured that he was never exposed to any music created by anyone but himself.

The man grew curious and somehow procured a piece of Beethoven's work, unbeknownst to his caregiver. He listened to the music, enjoying it immensely. However, as soon as he had finished, he knew that he could not use what he heard in Beethoven's music in his own. His music became inhibited as he avoided those chords and combinations he had heard in the great composer's work, and eventually his transgression was discovered. For his crime, he was forbidden to ever play music again and he was returned to normal society.

Years later, he entered a bar where an forlorn piano sat in the corner. The temptation was too much. The man could not resist. To the shock of the occupants of the bar, he sat down and began to play, producing the most beautiful and harmonious music from the dilapidated and out-of-tune instrument. It was not long before government officials came to deliver justice to this man who had twice broken the law. His punishment was swift and irrevocable; they cut off his fingers. Surely this would prevent him from breaking the law again.

He was assigned to work on a road crew. Without fingers, he couldn't do much, except for hold a sign. He began to hear rhythms in the world around him and again began to make music, this time without an instrument. He used what was around him, beating out beautiful rhythms and melodies. The officials again came quickly to silence the law-breaker, this time taking his life.

I can't remember what this story was called or who wrote it, but I have vivid mental pictures of it. I may have gotten the ending a little confused, but this story has stuck with me for a long time. I've been thinking a lot about creativity in the last little while. Sewfrench posted about it earlier this month, and since then I've been thinking about how I create.

Once upon a time, I thought I was not creative. I thought that a lack of original ideas made me not creative. In the quote above, which I borrowed from Sewfrench's post on this subject, it says that being creative means looking at things from a different perspective and being able to generate new possibilities or new alternatives. To be honest, I don't think there are any new ideas left. It's all been said and done. But that doesn't mean there aren't creative people.

Think about it this way; using a pattern to make an item of clothing is not considered as an uncreative endeavor. You get to choose the fabrics, colors and perhaps make an alteration or two and you make it your own. Even if you choose the very same colors as shown on the pattern, you’ve still created something that was not in existence before. And nobody says, “well, you used a pattern so you’re not creative.” You can apply the same line of thinking to using a recipe when cooking. Why shouldn't that also be the case with quilt making or gardening or writing? Just because you saw it somewhere else doesn’t mean you’re not creative. And why re-invent the wheel every time, anyway? I consider myself to be very creative, but hardly ever come up with a project from nothing. I almost always see something that inspires me and then make it my own.

I'm plugging away at my pinwheel sampler quilt. I'm SO close to finishing it I can taste it. I have 16 {out of 40} sections of sashing left to quilt and I will be there. This quilt has been so much fun to work on. I don't know if I will ever do such a detailed quilting job again, but it is good to know I can. Since I started machine quilting, I have been watching other quilters who do beautiful work and they have inspired me. I've incorporated a lot of that in my quilt. I've used ideas from Wendy at Ivory Spring, Natalia at Piece 'n Quilt, Leah at The Free Motion Quilting Project, Karen McTavish and Lane at That Man Quilts.

More than a year ago, Lane did a quilt he called West of Paris, Texas. I was absolutely in awe of the spiraling or twisting feathers he did. I was in the planning stages for this quilt and was going to do a sort-of braid in the sashings, but when I saw Lane's feathers I knew that's what I wanted to do. This is the last bit of quilting left on my quilt. I left it for last because, while it is completely awesome, it is also scary. This is my second section. The feathers are not uniform and it looks a bit pinched.

It took me probably five or six more sections to get comfortable enough to know how to fill the space evenly and make the feathers more uniform, but I think I'm finally there.

I'm grateful to those, named and unnamed, who inspired me!

Today's post brought to you by:

Pinwheel Sampler: I'm Finished Unpicking. I Think.

Be brave. Take risks. Nothing can substitute experience.
–Paulo Coelho

My quilt label is once again out-of-date, but I've finally got the quilting done in all of the pinwheel blocks.

This is the first time I've shown the whole quilt top. Just to balance it out, here is the back. I LOVE the windmills along the seam.

I took these pictures on Monday and Tuesday of last week but didn't have a chance to write a post. I finally had a few minutes on Saturday and with the goal of keeping things short and sweet, I spent way to much time editing photos and putting together the above collage. I was going to post just that and call it done, but I started writing, I figured I might as well give you the full guided tour. Obviously, it's a really long tour as I'm just posting it now. And there's a bit of picture overload. Off we go, then.

Block 1A: A little bit of stippling, a few swirls and some pebbles. I wasn't sure how this block was going to turn out. Unpicking was involved so I could do the swirls in colors of thread that stand out better in the pink and brown sections. I think the pebbles done in pink look kind of lacy.

Block 1B: More swirls and pebbles and a big flower which I really like. I didn't care much for this block before it was quilted, but really like it now.

I hadn't planned to add a second row of stitching around the pebbles, but while I was working, it just seemed like that's what it needed. It kind of frames it in.

Block 2A: I was really leaning towards unpicking the swirls in the sashing, but finally decided that I'm OK with having some supercalifragilisticexpialidocious swirls and some supercraptastic swirls and used the Blue Line Eraser to remove my spacing marks. I think I'm done unpicking. Or, at least I'm not going to unpick anything in this block.

Block 2B: This block is one of the first blocks I finished when I was working on this quilt a year ago. It's been quietly avoiding the seam ripper and is one of only a handful of blocks that hasn't been unpicked even just a little. Or a lot, as the case may be.

Block 3A: I finished this block last year as well. This is one of my favorite blocks pre-quilting, but I didn't like how the doodle quilting in the background looked. My options were to unpick and use a lighter color of thread, or add more quilting. I went with the second option and ended up with a lot of thread-play in a color of thread that stands out. I'm not sure how I feel about it. And I don't really have the option to unpick anymore, so I guess it stays.

Block 3B: Again, one of my favorite blocks pre-quilting. And one of the first blocks I worked on last year. I'd just mastered meandering feathers and really wanted to do a wreath. I'd intended to do feathers on the inside and outside, but saw a feather wreath like this somewhere and decided to do criss-crossing straight lines instead. I used a walking foot for that and it was a hassle. But I LOVE how it turned out.

I did an approximation of McTavashing in the background. I probably should have brushed up on it before I did it in the quilt, because I remembered it differently than it really is. At this scale, my stitches aren't as even as they could be. Still, I really like the effect.

Block 4A: I am still undecided on whether to unpick the feathers in those pink triangles in the center. I think it would look better if the thread stood out a little more. I decided to try the straight-line quilting with my free-motion foot on this block. It was scary, but not too bad for a first attempt. And it was a lot less of a hassle than using a walking foot, which makes up for the scary factor.

Block 4B: This is another block that I like more after it is quilted than before. The quilting is fairly simple, but I think it works. I love the feather "swags" in the pink flying geese. You can't see it, but there are feathers in the brown part of the pinwheel as well. I also did the straight-line quilting on this block with the free-motion foot. Still scary, but I did improve a bit from the last block.

Block 5A: This block is another of my favorites, both before and after quilting. I've repeated a few quilting motifs throughout the quilt, but tried to do different things in each block to make them all unique. I really like to do fans or half-flowers in the triangles. I did feathers in the brown section {which you cannot see} that stretch from the corner to corner across the length of each section. They kind of look like kite tails.

I love those little loopy swirls.

Block 5B: I did half-flowers in the smaller center triangles and then did different leaves in the big pink triangles and the brown sections. I really like how the leaves came out. They are kind of rough, but that is how they are supposed to be, instead of trying to be pretty and round and smooth and not quite succeeding.

I used the leaves that we did in the 2012 Free-Motion Challenge in January as filler for the background. The leaves in the background and half-flowers in the center pinwheel are round and smooth and make a nice contrast with the the rougher leaves in the pink and brown areas.

Block 6A: I really like how this block turned out. The dark fabrics are really difficult to photograph so that you can see the quilting. I guess you'll have to trust me when I tell you there are feathers there. Getting the curlicues to come out smoothly in a larger space than I've quilted them in before was a bit challenging, and I possibly didn't do the best job ever on that part. I'm hoping the awesome pink fabric will make up for that. The swirl filler in the background is quite possibly my favorite bit of quilting in this whole quilt, but I can't be 100% sure. I love how it came out, though.

Block 6B: These two Dutchman's Puzzle blocks were the hardest blocks to figure out quilting for. I think it was because I wanted the pinwheel in the center and the large windmill to stand out and the extra flying geese blocks in the corners were kind of in the way. The quilting in this one is pretty simple, but I like the effect.

Again, I used my free-motion foot to do the straight-line quilting. I'm still working on this and not all of my straight-line quilting is this even, but this little section is pretty darn awesome and I had to show it off.

Block 7A: I should quit using the word "favorite" because it implies exclusivity. I'm not sure what other word to use in it's place though and this is another of blocks that is a favorite, both before and after quilting. It was one of the first blocks I finished last year. I used a walking foot for the straight lines and I love how it came out. I had the curlicues stitched in a light pink that blended in, but ended up unpicking and using the darker pink, which I like much better.

Block 7B: This quilt is called In the Pink: A Study in Pinwheels. Even though I have doubles of all the blocks, I wanted to quilt something different in each one. I wanted to stretch myself a bit and I wanted the quilting to accent the piecing. It is fun to compare the different quilting in each of the sets of twin blocks. The difference the quilting makes in the perception of the block is especially evident in this set of twins. In the block below, the quilting emphasizes the three frames around the center pinwheel and you see both the pink and white pinwheels together as a block. The quilting in the block above makes the pink pinwheel stand out and emphasizes only the brown frame.

Block 8A: The loopy half-flower and swirl filler in the background is something different in this block than the others, but I've repeated half-feathers, feather "swags" and flowers.

Block 8B: Again, nothing really new here; arcs, fans, half-feathers. Something about the straight line quilting in the background that frames out the on-point squares makes me think "80's." Is that just me, or does anyone else get that vibe?

I just have the quilting in the sashings left. I'm doing feathers. The finish line is in sight. Sort of.

Today's post brought to you by: