P.'s String Ring Dresden: Finished at Last

Nobody trips over mountains. It is the small pebble that causes you to stumble. Pass all the pebbles in your path and you will find that you have crossed the mountain. –Unknown

First, welcome to all my new followers! I've had about 25 new people jump aboard my crazy train in the last 24 hours. I'm glad you're all here! If you don't mind me asking, what or who sent you my way? I can tell something is going on over at The Facebook and that it has something to do with my Folded Fabric Star, but I haven't been able to trace the source. I'd love to be let in on the secret. I hope no one is promising you big things, because it is slow going over here right now. Case in point, the quilt I'm about to show.

P. mailed this quilt to me on December 12^th. I mailed it back to her all quilted on December 20^th. Now, that sounds pretty awesome, doesn't it? Fastest quilting job ever, right? Not so much. She mailed it on December 12, 2012 and I mailed it back on December 20, 2013. And I actually could have mailed it earlier this week. Procrastination at its finest. {Hangs head in shame.} P. has been more than patient with me, which I truly appreciate. I hope her patience is rewarded.

I put the quilt on LadyBug's bed for a little photo shoot. My camera didn't like the light quality, so it is a little blurry. But here it is. Finished! Aside from the unbound edges, it kind of looks like it belongs there. {Sidebar: Isn't LadyBug's bed pretty? I bought assemble-it-yourself bedroom sets for Grasshopper and LadyBug seven or eight years ago. Grasshopper's had blue labels on the boxes and the set is a pretty [TARDIS] blue. I put his together first. LadyBug's set had pink labels on it and when I pulled out her white furniture pieces, she asked why hers wasn't pink. It's funny now because I'm pretty sure she'd refuse to sleep in a pink bed.}

Here is a close up of the quilting in the String Ring Dresdens {from which the quilt gets its name}. I'm really happy with how they turned out. I was so worried about getting the quilting right in the Dresdens because they are the focus of the quilt.

And here's a gratuitous PictTapGo_App and Instagrammed shot. They totally need to make PC versions of these apps . It is fun to play around with the filters.

Here's a close-up of the scrappy border and one of the diamonds. I'm all about coloring inside the lines. I like to quilt to enhance the piecing. I tried to keep it fairly simple — mostly straight lines, with bit of free-motion to accent — as P.'s directive was {paraphrasing} “less is more.”

And I made an embroidered quilt label to go on the back as a thank you to P. for trusting me with her quilt. When she started this quilt, she put out a call for strings. I sent her a few fabrics {as I quilted I noticed that fabrics I sent her were in 11 of the 12 Dresdens}, so I pulled a few favorites from those to use in the label {which is now outdated. I had a serious case of project procrastination on this quilt. Sheesh.}. It is meant to sit in a corner of the quilt, so I hope P. will show us how it looks when she's trimmed and bound the quilt.

I'd like to send a huge thank you to Paulette for her trust, patience and friendship. I really hope you like the quilting!

More about this quilt:
P.'s Post on How the Idea Came About
P.'s Post on the Significance of the Color Scheme
P.'s Post on Design Decisions
P.'s Post on the Finished Flimsy
P.'s String Ring Dresden Tutorial
A Start on the Quilting
A Little Bit of Quilting Progress
Getting Closer
P's Post on the Bound and Finished Quilt

Today's post brought to you by:

A String Ring Dresden Quilt Progress Report

Paralyze resistance with persistence. –Woody Hayes

The ditch quilting is done. The embellishments in the pieced border and black diamonds are finished. I crissed and I crissed and I crissed. Then I procrastinated. Eventually I got around to some crossing. After a little more procrastination I crossed and then crossed some more. And I finally got the straight line quilting finished in P.'s String Ring Dresden. {I PicTapGo_Apped and Instagramed [find me @suchasewandsew] the photo and it's supposed to be all artsy smarsty, but it just looks over-exposed. The original is not much better. It's kind of hard to tell when you've got less than 3" square of photo to go on.}

The red centers in the Dresdens are all crissed and crossed too. All I have left to quilt is something fancy in the Dresden rings. {See, it's a crap shoot with full-size photos that have been PicTapGo_Apped and Instagramed. This one is kind of awesome.}

That fancy pants quilting that remains to be done is at the root of all of the procrastination. It is very intimidating to quilt for another quilter. But as soon as I finish those Dresdens, then I can work on anything I want {read: I have forbidden myself to even think of another project until this one is done}. I have a good idea. Now I just need to put needle to quilt and make it work. And so off I go to my Jolly Holiday Workshop. A little music to quilt by, if you please.


Available for purchase from The Piano Guys or on iTunes.

We Now Return You To the Regularly Scheduled Program

The property of rain is to wet, and fire to burn; that good pasture makes fat sheep; and that a great cause of the night is lack of the sun. –William Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act 3, Scene 2

I've been working on and off for about 4 months on the quilting for a flimsy that P. made. When it's "on" I make a lot of progress. But it's mostly been "off." When last I left off, I had the ditch work and border finished and almost half of the background quilting {diagonal lines through most of the quilt} finished.

I've been working on it again the last couple of weeks and had really hoped to have it finished by now. But I seem to overestimate my abilities to bend time to my will and underestimate the number of distractions in the way of Parent Teacher Conferences with really long lines, play dates, loads of laundry, meals to prepare, sick days {I had my first cold in more than two years}, the need to sleep for ⅓ of the day and just plain life. And I have about a zillion other projects in progress that sometimes just call to me and I have to stop and work on those. Nevertheless, I am roughly ⅞ of the way finished with the diagonal quilting.

I like being on the far side of the half-way point. It means I have less left to do than I have already done. And it's when things all start to take shape and that pesky voice of self-doubt is quieted, either because it was a good plan and it's coming together or because it is too late to do anything about it anyway.

I've been using blue painter's tape to mark the lines for quilting. The tape is really only good for one use; it picks up too much lint on its special clean-release adhesive and so I started a tape ball. I didn't think about it until I was about ⅔ of the way through and had already used a full roll of tape and was a good way into my second roll, but it's still a good size — bigger than a golf ball, but smaller than a baseball. I ran out of daylight today, what with all those things that keep cropping up, like people needing clean underwear and homework checked, so I'll show you a photo another day. In the meantime, you can see my marking system and if you look closely, you can see the pattern starting to fill in in the bottom right corner of the photo.

If I hurry, I can make the tape ball a little bigger before the requisite hour begins to get my full 8 hours of sleep.

The String Ring Dresden and the Bogart

Bogart: /ˈboʊ gɑrt/ — Slang, Verb:
1. to take an unfair share of something; keep for oneself instead of sharing. Derived, presumably, from actor Humphrey Bogart's tendency to frequently hold a cigarette between his lips or in his hand, but never to actually smoke it.
Noun:
1. a person who hogs or monopolizes something.
2. a magical creature that takes the form of whatever you fear the most.

Once upon a time, P. made a fabulous String Ring Dresden quilt top {String Dresden Tutorial here}. P. does amazing things with fabric. I loved the colors she picked. I even sent her a few fabrics when she put out a call for more strings in those colors, and it was really fun to see them incorporated into her quilt top. So when she said she wasn't going to quilt it herself, but send it off on a fabulous quilting vacation—destination to be determined, I opened my big mouth and told her I had an idea for those fabulous Dresdens.

A few months later, a box arrived at my doorstep, which I resolutely ignored for a good three months. I was absolutely terrified that I would mess up her beautiful quilt top with my poor quilting skills. Eventually, I took a peek at her flimsy {she had it folded right sides together} and was completely amazed by it all over again. Photographs don't quite do quilts justice. From there, I started fleshing out the quilting plan details in the back of my mind, while still ignoring the quilt in its box for a few more months. Sometime around the five month mark, I knew it was time to get going or send the quilt back. I took a deep breath and started quilting. I stitched in the ditch to stabilize the quilt and then did ¼" echo quilting around all the Dresdens, diamonds and border.

Then I started adding some details. I'm not finished yet, but so far, not bad.

What P. doesn't know, is that when I'm finished with this quilt I'm keeping it. I even got her to send me the binding for it. I told her that I like to put the binding on part-way through the quilting process to keep lint from building up on the quilt top from the excess border of batting. It is true, but I told P. that as part of my evil plot to get possession of this super fabulous quilt. And now that it's here, there's pretty much nothing she can do to get it back .

Folded Fabric Star: Tote Bag Edition

Though my soul may set in darkness,
It will rise in perfect light,
I have loved the stars too fondly
To be fearful of the night.

–Sarah Williams

Once upon a time, I saw a really cool folded fabric star. And so, of course, I had to make my own.

I went to the tutorial, decided I was definitely not going to make a pot holder, got my fabrics ready and made a tote bag. Geta deserves the credit for the tote bag idea. I made the straps nice and long so that I could comfortably put it over my shoulder and not have the bag hitting me just under the armpit.

I had most of this bag finished before I dropped Grace off for her three-week spa vacation on April 10^th. As a matter of fact, on the day I took her in I only needed to put on the binding around the top of the bag, but didn't dare take the time to do it for fear of missing the repair man's pick-up time {which is not an exact time; just whenever he gets to the shop on that particular Wednesday} and have to wait another week. By the time I got Grace back on May 3^rd, I'd moved on to other things and this bag sat for another couple of weeks. Sometime very early this week, or maybe even late last week, I lost my mojo. I got kind of worried there for a bit, when my funk lasted for more than a day or two and my desire to sew completely vanished. I picked this back up with the hope that doing something easy that would lead to a quick finish would put me back in my groove. It didn't really. I finished this several days ago and wasn't super excited about it. Eventually my mojo came back all on its own, though, and I am really happy with how it turned out.

The red center of the star isn't quite large enough. While I actually did read through the directions, when it came time to place the fabrics, I just looked at the pictures and missed the part about moving the second fabric ½” down from the first and leaving ¼” between fabrics after that. But there was no way I was unpicking. Next time I'll remember. And there probably will be a next time because I need a cool tote bag for church. I added an extra color, using nine fabrics instead of just eight. To compensate, I increased the base fabric and the width of the fabric rectangles by ½”. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I kept the quilting simple. Actually, I just copied the quilting in the tutorial, not wanting to distract from the star of the show, the folded fabric star. And I didn't think the bag itself needed anything fancy, either. I just did straight lines on the front and diamonds, or intersecting lines at a 45˚ angle on the sides and back.

I'm using this as my “go bag” for hand sewing projects. I almost always take a little something to work on when I know I'm going to be sitting and waiting, like at the doctor's office or the driver license division or a book signing. I've been using ziplock bags, which keep the project clean, but they're a little tricky to juggle when the waiting stops and the business to attend to commences. I'll keep my Stitchy Kit inside it all the time, and I'll probably still use ziplock bags to hold my projects, but I'll slip those inside the tote bag when it is time to go. Functional and fabulous, no?

Today's post brought to you by:
Show Off Friday at Pieceful Life

Random Bits: Vol. 8

In the spring I have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of weather inside of four and twenty hours. –Mark Twain

Identity Crisis
March is having an identity crisis. I wish it would mistake itself for June instead of December.

{We woke up to a good 4" of snow today, completely covering all the spring bulbs that had started blooming. It continued to snow until nearly 2:00 pm. Then the sun came out and by 4:30 pm had melted most of the snow away.}

{Sidebar: I can't take credit for that beautiful bit of prose. A friend posted that on Facebook before the snow and it was so perfect I had to use it.}

The Continuing Saga of the Tortoise and the Snail, or Friday Night Sew-In Progress Report
My goal for Friday Night Sew-In was to finish the straight-line quilting in the white zig-zags of Miss Butterfly's quilt and to wind the bobbins for the FMQ in the colored zig-zags. I had three full zig-zag rows, two half rows {at the top and bottom}, plus one line of stitching left in a row to finish. I did make progress, but I still have one complete zig-zag and a half zig-zag along the bottom of the quilt. My bobbins are all ready to go, though. Never mind that three of the four were already wound.

In the past, I've never tried to strategically place my embroidered quilt labels on the back of the quilt. I just stitched them in along the seam and called it good. With the Pinkalicious and Little Boy Blue baby quilts, the piecing and quilting offered an opportunity to place them so that they wouldn't be stitched over. It was kind of frustrating, though, because the ultra-cuddle I used on the back of the quilts was stretchy and shifted. So when I set out to position the label for this quilt so that the colored stitching wouldn't intrude too much on the white label, I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best. I was surprised at how well it lined up. Horizontally, it is right on. Vertically, the label should sit ¾” of an inch lower, except that when I cut the top piece of backing, I forgot to add the extra allowance and instead cut it exactly where I wanted the label to be. Measure twice, cut once never rang truer.

Favourite Things Friday: The Frontrunner {a week and a day late}
Last Friday, the Not-So-Little Bugs had the day off from school. I took the day off work and we set off on an adventure. With high spirits, ample snacks and entertainment, we set off to visit my mom and dad via Utah's light rail, the Frontrunner. We arrived at the platform early, bought our tickets and patiently waited for our train to arrive. Upon boarding, we picked seats with a table so that we could play the game Grasshopper brought.

Grasshopper refused to smile, and if we look a bit rough, well, that's because we were. Part of our adventure was to get hair cuts, all three of us {and I got a color}, from my sister. The ride took 1 hour and 57 minutes, traversing 81 miles. This is 37 minutes longer than it takes to drive, but I was all for taking the train since that meant that I didn't have to drive. Before we were barely underway, though, I got a mite queasy. The motion sickness triggered a massive migraine, which I tried my best to medicate and ignore. After our hair appointments, we had a little party at my parents' house. My dad cooked hamburgers and hot dogs on the grill and the weather was so lovely {mid-60's; see also, Identity Crisis} that we ate outside. All of my siblings and their kids were there, except for one sister and her family who live in Idaho and who did not have the day off school. It was so nice to be all together. We played games after dinner, and the Not-So-Little Bugs and I caught the last train home. It was definitely a favourite, in my book.

Random Bits: Vol 7

Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance, order, rhythm and harmony. –Thomas Merton

Absentia
I think about blogging a lot. I write posts in my head all the time. But getting them down “on paper” is another matter. This post is a patchwork of the things that have been on my mind the last week or so. I've often wished for a USB port behind my ear, so that I could plug in and download my thoughts. Then I could blog things one at a time. It's been so long, I don't know if anyone is left out there to read this. I hope you all haven't given up on me. There is still a ton of traffic here and I check at least once a day to see if there are new comments. I stopped getting excited a couple of weeks ago, though, because all there is is spam, spam and more spam. I know some of you are also getting spammed into oblivion. Do you think if we asked nicely, that Google/Blogger would put anonymous commenting in its own category to be turned on and off at will and independent of any other commenting options?

A Pocket Dial and Other Telephone Related Chatter
At work yesterday afternoon I answered the phone, but couldn't understand what the person on the other end said in reply to my “how may I help you?” spiel. This isn't uncommon; lots of our customers speak English as a second language, so I took a deep breath and prepared to do my best. However, the unintelligible reply was followed by a long silence, to which I answered “hello?” Then there was a snippet of a conversation, in perfect English, about bone spurs on someone's heels. I tried another “hello?” but it was obvious that I was not included in the conversation.

I'm still scratching my head over it. You have to be a very persistent pocket dialer in order to get to me. First you have to dial the main number, which could be on anyone's speed dial. But then you have to select option 4 or dial my direct extension. And bone spurs, even ones on heels, have absolutely nothing to do with how many people we billed them for last month.

There seems to be a funny phenomenon going on at my desk. Aside from the occasional pocket dial, no one ever calls me at work unless I'm in the bathroom. It's getting so I'm afraid to even go, because I know I'll have voice mail when I get back, which is ten times more work to handle than a straight up phone call. Three times this week, I've come back from a quick potty break to find I had a message. How is that even possible?

My New Best Friend
I'd like to introduce you to Mel. She's my new best friend, which I'm sure she'd be interested to know since we've never met. Mel has a food blog. And not just any food blog. It's a good food blog, which is just what I've been missing in my life.

A couple of months ago, I gave up dairy due to intolerance. Thanks to some great advice from Regan and P., who are both dairy free, I survived my first few weeks of wondering what I actually can eat. {Sidebar: there are milk or milk products in everything, from chocolate to bread to taco seasoning packets. Strangely, there is not milk found in Oreos.} Regan hooked me up with a good dairy-free “butter” and gave me lots of advice on how to live dairy free. P. commiserated over the loss of most chocolate products in our diets. And I muddled through, hunting down every last allergen ingredient list that could be found on the internet for fast-food restaurants. When nothing was available on-line, I called ahead to places I was contemplating eating at and harassed the poor employees into giving me the low-down on what was dairy free. I mourned the loss of pizza and ice cream and my favorite casseroles, which all have cream-of-some-kind-or-other soup in them. And I kind of quit cooking on a regular basis.

Eventually, I found a new-age hippie herb shop that sells lots organic and whole foods, as well as lots of dairy free food items like vegan “cheese” and “sour cream.” I was able to make some of my favorite dishes with the diary free substitutes, but there were still some serious holes in my menu.

Then I met Mel and her fabulous food blog. She has menu plans and a month's worth of meals that take 30 minutes or less. She's not dairy free, but her recipes are fresh, without a lot of processed foods. And she doesn't cook with cream-of-anything soup {at least not that I've seen}. Everything we've tried so far has been delicious. The wraps {with dairy free cheese and sour cream substitutes} we had on Monday were so good, I ate the left-overs for breakfast on Tuesday morning. And the Sweet & Sour Chicken we had for dinner on Wednesday night was also lunch on Thursday and dinner tonight. I've never been so excited to have left-overs. {Sidebar: whoever invented sweet & sour sauce is a genius. Seriously. On the one hand it is so innocently sweet that you want to take it home to meet your mother and on the other, so sour that your eyes roll back a little in your head.} {Sidebar: P., the sweet & sour chicken is gluten-free if you use the right soy sauce. And I'm wondering if you could use honey instead of sugar. This recipe seems to be saying “use honey in me.”} I've pinned about a dozen other things to try from Mel's, and I'm looking forward to it!

I've bookmarked a few other food blogs that look promising, and as soon as I stop drooling over Mel's Kitchen Cafe, I'm going to take a serious look and see what other food adventures I can take.

Quilter's Favorites
You meet the most amazing people in blogland that you might not otherwise ever encounter in real life. Have you met Geta yet? She is a seriously amazing quilter. In a little under two months, she is hosting the Quilter's Favorites linky party.

It looks to be quite the blog event. Anyone and everyone can participate. Geta's put together a list of questions that you can print out and answer as you quilt over the next few weeks. Then during the week of May 10^th, you can post your answers, link up and then go learn something new from the other quilters who link up. I'm looking forward to clicking around the blogosphere to see what new project I just have to start.

The Tale of the Tortoise and the Snail or, What I'm Working on For Friday Night Sew-In
I haven't officially participated in Friday Night Sew-In for a year now. But with Mr. Bug on 3^rd shift {midnight to 10:00 am}, pretty much every Friday night is Friday Night Sew-In at Bug Cottage. {Sidebar: I am so happy to announce that Mr. Bug is working days again! Do a little happy dance with me!} Even though Mr. Bug is home tonight, I'm doing Friday Night Sew-In, because he's still transitioning from being a nocturnal animal. We'll catch up on our TV and I'm going to see if I can get a little quilting done on Miss Butterfly's Zig-Zag quilt. I was hoping to be a little farther along on it by now.

Since I last posted {11 days ago}, I still had to put the back together before I could baste the quilt. Then I had to make the binding and I decided that I needed to pre-wash and dry the batting {for shrinkage purposes, and not at all because I was procrastinating; see also, persnickety}. After that I was distracted by some chain piecing on a really, really, really old Ph.D quilt that I hope to finish sometime this decade. I was certain that the Zig-Zag quilt need to rest for a little bit, kind of like bread dough. And I knew that basting it was going to be pretty hairy. I was right. It took 2½ hours. I procrastinated that until last weekend and have been working on the straight-line quilting a little bit at a time this week. I had a couple of no-sew days {I must have been really tired or busy to have a day go by without sewing at least a little bit; see also, Mel's Kitchen Cafe}. I have just shy of half of the white zig-zags finished. My goal for FNSI is to finish the rest of those and then wind bobbins for the threads for the FMQ in the colored zig-zags. I will probably bind the quilt before I do the FMQ {the quilt should be pretty stabilized by then and it is just that much less bulk to work with. Plus, it keeps lint from building up on the quilt as it rubs off the extra batting around the edges} , but it is always good to be prepared.

Why, yes. That is a twin size quilt, all 72” x 96” of it, balanced on my little sewing table. When I quilt, I hold as much of it as I can in my lap and then fold or roll the rest of it to fit on the table. This is the biggest quilt I've done, but so far, it is working out nicely.


Extreme Shepherding
Confession time: I started this post in December. I knew that in my next hodge-podge post, I wanted to show you this funny video. So I threw the HTML code in to a draft and have been moving the scheduled post date up by a few weeks every time the draft got old enough to drop down into the list of already posted stuff and get lost. There wasn't anything else in this post until today. And I'm hoping this is still as funny as I remember!

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.

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