A Day to Play

 Well, kind of.

This is the only day this school vacation week that all 3 kids are away visiting Nana.  I have work accumulating in the studio, and needed to get things going.  April is blowing by fast and my trips here and there are not helping me to get things finished.  I did finish a lap quilt late yesterday, loaded another small (but dense custom) wall hanging, which I finished this morning.  Before I depart for Paducah, I have a huge E2E to quilt.  It can wait for Monday though.

Here is a quilt I finished a couple weeks ago.  It has made it's journey home to Tennessee already so I will show it.  This is a hybrid-type quilt.  It's got traditional blocks, but in non-traditional fabrics, all combined with free-piecing of the letters.  I didn't want to take the quilting too seriously or make it too formal.

 The butterfly kind of takes center stage, so it got a visible (variegated colorful thread) trail behind it.   Somehow the free-feathers as its background seemed to depict airy flight.

The blocks were all done a little differently, but I tried to repeat the quilting if there was a neighboring similar block.  Mostly, I took a geometric approach.

 I used a variegated Rainbows thread on the blocks because they were every color batik under the sun.  It allowed me to use just one thread, and still have it seem cohesive.

 Here's another look.  I don't have too much to comment on the quilt.  It took me a little outside of my innate comfort box, which for a quilter is a good thing.  Different quilts keep you thinking of new and different things to stitch.

So, like I said initially..."A day to play"...when the wall hanging I was working on was done, I stitched some on this new flimsy.  Can't really call it a flimsy yet as it is in a multitude of pieces, but many of the pieces are stitched together now.  I had the large center dahlia done a week ago, but now it has 4 smaller babies dahlias.  They still need their centers, which I will hand stitch.  I am playing with combining the silk Radiance with the quilting cottons.  It is a bit of a pain to make the bias strips with, but I think I will like the effect.  I love how I have been able to use a couple of fabrics that I really like, but just have never really found a great use for...the pommegranites and the Treetop Fancy.  They are perfect in color and texture for this quilt.  This quilt will have a ton of hand applique once I get the basic structure of it together (ie, when time stands still and lets me just do what I want to do!!).

Next week, I am off to Paducah to see my 2 quilts in the show, and the other magnificent 398 quilts that were accepted.  I can hardly wait!!