First pics

Okay, here are the first pics of the fancy quilt I've been working on all week. I can assure you that the quilt looks better in person than this picture shows...or maybe it's just that I don't want to see all the crooked lines and the camera didn't mind showing them clearly. Regardless, I'm really enjoying this learning experience, even though it does have a long learning curve. It was frustrating to try to take pics because the quilting doesn't show up all that great on the front. The fabric is a light olive green and I used a yellow 100 wt thread, hoping the lighter color would show up on the fabric. But, because of the thread weight, it kind of disappears, except where I went over a line of quilting more than once to get from one place to another. This especially happened in the Diane-shiko (from Diane Gaudynski) section in the lower right of the picture. I couldn't make the tiny filler circles round without going over them more than once. I won't do that next time I use that pattern. The other patterns came from Leah Day at her blog 365 days of free motion quilting. In the lower left, I used pebbles in a stream. Just above center, between the two feather swirls, I used swirling bananas and in the upper right, which you can't see very well, I used gentle flames. I'm going to keep filling it in with different patterns. I sat the other night and looked at all I'd like to learn to do and made a list of the ones I thought would fit this quilt and I'm going to use this to teach myself. It's not as easy as I thought it would be. And, it takes a lot of thread. I bought 4 spools of each thread color thread and I know I won't use all the yellow, but I might need more of the thread I used on the back as it has less yards of thread per spool.

This is the back. You can't tell the colors from this photo, but the fabric is a dark olive and the thread is chartreuse, so the stitching really shows up back here. Unfortunately, no one will see the back except another quilter, because you know we always look at the back, too. But, I'm sure my wall will really appreciate a good view. Sorry this one is so blurry. I didn't realize it in my haste to get a picture in before I left the house, but my hand must have moved while taking the picture.

Now, I'm thinking I might need to take a break this weekend and do some piecing. I need to look at something that's not olive green for a while. I have other tops started. I can certainly pull something out to finish. Maybe some nice applique???

Take care and have a wonderful Friday. I hope to post something fun over the weekend, but that depends on whether we can find any fun this weekend. The weather is rainy and drippy and we have carpets to clean. Oh, and I'm going to be hemming slacks for the kid. Quilters should never have to hem anything. It's an abuse of our skills. At least that's been my excuse since christmas when we gave her these two pair of khakis. Sounds good, huh?

Lane