Autumn Apples

I have always wanted to make an applecore quilt. I saw templates similar to these years ago and have lamented many times not buying them when I first saw them. At the quilt show in September one of the vendors had this acrylic set and so of course I bought it.

I'm hoping to make a scrappy red, green and tan quilt. I have no deadline, it'll just be handwork for me to carry about and if it stays a UFO I'm okay with that.

Coneflowers

This is my completed quilt top "Coneflowers". It has some issues, places where the color selection might have been better. When I look at this picture as a thumbnail, it all works perfectly, but when you look at it full size (and when you look at the quilt) the transitions are not as nice and you don't see plainly where the petals join the center on the flower in the front. I am debating whether to change the fabrics, or live with it.

Next month ECQG is bringing Linda Fiedler in and she'll be teaching thread painting for one of her workshops. I might use this piece as an experiment for that technique. Perhaps I can shade some of those weaker transitions to help them along? For right now, I'm claiming a victory. I've taken a workshop and completed the top from that class in record time. Woohoo!

Picture Piecing with Ruth Powers

I felt really blessed to take Ruth Powers' Picture Piecing workshop last month. I'm trying to remember if I've ever been so eager to finish a workshop piece before, but I don't think I have. I showed you a fraction of the quilt yesterday.

The pattern is called "Coneflowers" and is really easy to put together. The challenge for me has been in the fabric selection. I love the way peach and brown work together, and I'm glad to be playing with it in this piece.

What Is It?

Can you guess what this is?

Hint: I took a workshop with the ECQG in September and this is a piece of the project from that class.

A Vanilla Quilt?

As I was writing my last entry, I pondered all the words I used to describe the colors that range between white and brown. I hate beige. Taupe, too. Five letter words ending in "e" are not pretty words for color. Of course I don't hate these colors. In fact, I LOVE them. I just hate words that sound like they might be found on pantyhose packaging.

At the ECQG meeting on Friday a lady showed a quilt that was all white and beige (that's my story and I'm sticking to it, although thinking back, I realize it might have had other colors, LOL). I turned to my friend Pam and said, "I love vanilla quilts." She laughed at me, but it's what came to my mind when I reached for a descriptive term for the soft off whites in the quilt. It seems to me there was a fairly popular pattern in the mid 90s called "Vanilla Rose" that was all creams and soft pinks. So perhaps that informed my selection.

I've been cutting up the scraps from my hunter's star quilt into 2.5" blocks and I'm going to make 9 patch blocks from the lighter browns and white fabric. I'll use them as the leaders and enders of my sewing while I work on other things, and at some point I'll have enough 9-patch blocks to make a quilt. This is the first time I've ever tried Bonnie Hunter's technique for making a scrap quilt along with other work I'm doing. So far I have four 9-patch blocks. We'll see how well it goes. By the way, Bonnie has a new book coming out about using leaders and enders for making quilts. Drop by at Quiltville and see all her wonderful quilt ideas.

Monthly Accounting: October

Alright so I've already confessed that I wasn't sewing much over the summer. (As in, if it it didn't need binding or a hanging sleeve for the show, I didn't even think about doing it.) So I have a few projects that are still in UFO status and a few more that I've started since the show ended:

Quilt tops that need basting, quilting and finishing:

Ramblin' Rose
Briners' Picnic
Ties That Bind


Quilt tops that need piecing:

Hunter's Star (A few blocks made, end size unknown)
Vanilla Quilt (Three blocks made, end size unknown)
Flowers (Piecing nearly finished, just three more sections to go)


Other projects:

Apron (pieces cut, but I need to transfer marks from pattern to fabric and do the sewing.)


Surrender:
I have given up on the applique center that I was making for last year's Piecemakers exchange quilt. I was really unhappy with how it was turning out, and every time I picked it up I told everyone who was within earshot, "I hate this piece". It was time to let it go. So I'd like to work out some other arrangment of the blocks and move on, but it's not high on my list of priorities.