Packing The Projects..

I was emailing Tonya about how much I love the little fun quilting details she adds to her quilts, and how fun it is to draw things freehand as quilting designs. This is what I did for the feathers in the two corners of my wonky "The Best Things In Life Are Quilted" Quilt...this is the first quilt I did using Tonya letters, and I used lots of bits of UFOs and crumb blocks for the center, even some rejected Dear Jane blocks are in there.

Anyway...drawing the feathers was easy with a blue washout marker. I wanted it to be funky and have that 'childlike' appeal to it, so each feather plume is quilted individualy as tear drops...just as if it were a continuous line pattern. The nicest thing about drawing designs is....you can make it FIT THE SPACE! It is so hard to find a stencil sometimes that will fit what you want, but if you can draw it, you can make it fit the area you need it to.

I've quilted zig zags in the narrow borders, diagonal lines going through the letters and the shirting print background in the outer border. The borders are also all different widths, which gives the quilt a catty-wompus off centered look which I think is fun. FYI...the evening stars in the border are 3" finished! Tonya thought I was nuts when she was over and saw them, I was INTENDING to do a whole bedsized quilt from them. Insane. I'm glad they made it into the border of this quilt along with a rejected border of flying geese that didn't work for another project. This was fun to put together! I hope to do more 'orphan' quilts like this in the future.

The whole quilt is quilted with PURPLE THREAD! I've got one border side left to finish quilting, and then I just have to finish up the middle with the baptist fans. My goal is to have this one DONE by the time I come home on the 24th.

I tried to get some good detail shots for ya, but alot of them turned out blurry, or you couldn't see the quilting detail...but I hope this gives you an idea. Pardon the machine basting thread snippies everywhere! You can click the pics to get a bigger view. I know the quilt looks like it has so much WHITE on the outside, and I usually do dark borders...this light border is a new thing for me, but I am going to finish it off with red binding I think which should frame it in a bit better!


Today I'm meeting my girlfriend Sandi for lunch. I've known her about 3 years now, and how I met her is so funny. We had just moved here, I was at the post office mailing off a customer quilt, and the line was out the door..she was a few people ahead of me in line, and she had a huge tote full of envelopes she was mailing out. My first thought was "I'm glad there is more than one teller or I am going to be behind her forever!" Then I heard her talking to the gal in front of her explaining that she was mailing fabric, that she sold fabrics on Ebay! Well, I butted right in and introduced myself. I was in a new town in a new state and I didn't know any quilters yet! She does mostly brights and novelties, with rare novelties being her specialty. We hit it off and though we love different things, we have a fun friendship and we meet for lunch when we can to catch up. She made us this card that we pass back and forth, and we take turns buying lunch for eachother so every once in a while we feel like WE are being treated. The card is in my wallet so it's MY turn to buy lunch today. She will decide where we go! Then next time, She will treat ME to lunch. We have the card because we can never remember who bought last time! *LOL*

Bonnie