Laden with Blunders

The pictures I am showing are of my 38" quilt.  I can be overly critical because it's not your's.  I can explain my errors in the comfort of knowing that I made them on my own quilt.  Mostly, these are not huge "errors"; they are more a matter of personal pickiness, or cases where the stitching didn't turn out as symmetrical as I would have liked.  Whatever the reason or excuse, it is frustrating me because each time I quilt the last couple days, it seems I make many hours of pickout too.

This corner is actually coming along pretty well.  My brown thread arrived yesterday.  Then we got snow today, kids got school delayed an hour and my daughter ended up home today with an eye infection.  As a result, not too much quilting.  For the entire day, only the sections of curved cross-hatching on the brown.  Oh, I say that, knowing that I did start on the center star only to realize it was going to have to be picked out because I hated it.  

 Yesterday was full of ups and downs.  Pros and cons.  I DID manage to get the bottom 2 corners quilted.  And I even like them.  That's a definite plus.  The downside, however, is that they (see below) are not exactly like the top two corner stars.  Translation: Some Pickout Required!  I decided that I like the single 1/4" of outlining on the inter-connected blocks (below) better than the double-line (above).  That's a relatively quick and easy fix.  I also decided that I don't particularly care for what I did on the 1/2" narrow border (above).  If I quilt on this at all, I will use a coordinating thread not the gold.   I am always going to be my worst critic, and sadly, won't be completely satisfied until this looks right, even if my right is different from your's.

 Only a little bit of the center red star shows, but it's all coming out.  I have been sketching away this afternoon trying to come up with something I like.  I want motifs that I have repeated elsewhere to make it cohesive.  That will come, and is by far and large the smallest of the quilt's demons right now.  What I discovered last night is that the filler that I am putting on top of the pieced stars has distorted the lines of the piecing in a few locations.  I didn't stabilize each seam before stitching the fill because I didn't want all those extra lines.  But another quilter noted today that I could have done it initially with water soluble thread (insert whack of forehead!).  It's not that it is an extremely huge area should I decide to rip it all out.  Afterall, this quilt is only 38" square, but it is, Ah... (in my best nonexistent Maine accent) wicked tightly stitched.  It would make me curse some fierce obscenities, and probably make me create some new bad 4-letter words. None the less, there may be no getting around it if I hope to have this in top showing condition.  If you double-click on the next picture, and look at the lower left points of the star, you can see what I am talking about.  That line ought to be straight.

So, thanks for all the great comments recently, and be patient with me as I stew in my frustration.  I know that much of this quilt is insanely unique.  It's just the other areas that leave me rolling my eyes that I must deal with :-)  Hope you have a good week-

Back to work

Though I have not posted in over a week, I have most definitely been busy.  I have several quilts finished for my clients, and am now working on a small wall-hanging of mine.  I'm really not at all convinced that I like this before the quilting, but I will finish it before I opt not to bind.  My goal was to create a quilt from solids that can be shown at quilt shows in a small quilt category (under 40" per side).  Hindsight tells me that the Moda Crossweaves may have not been the best fabric to use.  A batik or mostly solid would have been better.  None the less, I am quilting the heck out of it, hoping that I will like it better in the end.  After today, I have a sore back and wrists, but no added love!

Yesterday I went to A Quilter's Gathering show in Manchester, NH.  I had 3 quilts there, but only Zen Garden brought home quilt bling.  It was the only quilt to receive more than 2 ribbons, so that's pretty cool.  It received 1st in Color Compatibility, 2nd in Machine Quilting Excellence and 2nd in Overall Craftsmanship.  This is a smaller show, but it attracts some pretty big name quilters, both hand and machine quilters.  Several of them I know from the machine quilting show circuit.  Since I posted many of my pics to my Facebook page, I won't repost them here.  Best of Show was another Linda Roy hand quilted masterpiece.  Seems it was one of her's that won last year too.  It was fun getting to meet The Megan Farkas - even if it happened because I overheard a conversation where my name was mentioned.  I'm not nosey...just curious!  For those of you that don't know Megan, her quilt is the one here of the Japanese Ladies (maybe you've seen it in a magazine...).  I'm a fan of her quilts.  Yesterday was interesting listening to the much divided discussions over crystals on quilts.  I don't remember too many of them in the show that were twinkled up, but Zen Garden does have lots of very tiny crystals - 3mm ones.  It just twinkled because it was hanging beneath a bright light fixture and a skylight.  It almost seemed that the guests had been listening to the pre-election crap too long.  The crystal-no crystal discussion was taking on an election tone.  None the less, this quilt was appreciated and it was fin talking to people about it's making.

The quilt shows for 2012 are over now, and the planning for 2013 is in progress.

Blogger's Quilt Festival

Today's post is for the fall Blogger's Quilt Festival.  This an awesome online display of quilts brought to us by Amy (since if we are here browsing these, we aren't in Houston with all of quilting's lucky elite!).  We get to stay home and await Hurricane Sandy in the coming days.

My quilt is entitled Zen Garden.  This was finished this past winter.  I'll confess right off the bat to being a longarm quilter, and one the loves to make quilts for shows.  This was my 4th such quilt.  It had the pleasure of hanging in 4 or 5 shows this past season, bringing home a few ribbons.  Similarly, it's even made it into Quilter's Newsletter magazine.  But, enough with the boring stuff, you came here to see pictures.  Am I right?...

 

This quilt finishes at 65" square.  It's a traditional pattern called a broken star or Carpenter's star.  The applique all around the border almost disguises this.  It's deceptively easy to construct because the diamonds constructed of 25 pieces are actually made from strip sets.  The trick is just getting all the fabrics of the strips in the right order!  

One of the things I limited myself to when I made this quilt was to ONLY use fabrics from my stash.  So, there goes the possibility of this looking too traditional.  I have quite a bit of bolder color, larger print fabrics, and despite the size of these pieces being fairly small, they all seemed to work nicely at creating a visual colorburst effect.  

 

The majority of the quilt is the fabric used on the outer border and inner setting squares.  I knew since this was a Kona fabric (solids, though nice, are kind of dull and boring and they don't bring a lot of life to the party), I would need to make it interesting somehow.  As you can see, the setting squares were jazzed up by appliqueing a purple and pink flower to the inner corner, and then more applique.  The tan is just dull by itself.  The border around the star received a lot of Asian-inspired floral applique.  I love working with the bias strips, and the curvy-ness of this distracts the eye from the bland tan.  I was able to use flowers that are basically constructed from the same shape as the star is, and then brought many of the same green prints back in for leaves -- all 85 of so of them.   And I can't forget the butterflies.  They are my personal favorite.  A small feature that helps to define this as a garden.  I fussy cut them from a piece of fabric I had, then colored them with sharpie pens to make them the colors I wanted.

The part that I really love in the process, though, is when the quilting starts and the quilt is brought to life.  Design details can be added to the boring tan areas to make them visually stimulating, like the checkerboards shown above.  Rays were quilted into the inner star to bring it outwards.  I enjoy all the fun fillers that make the finished quilt an I-Spy of sorts.  Approximately 75 hours was spent on the quilting (did I mention that I am insane too??!)

 Here's a closeup of the edge...a small (yes, micro) micropiping gives the quilt interest, but also provides a little added stiffness to help it to hang straightly.

 Here's just a few more photos...

Thanks to Bonnie Hunter.  I posted 4 of the ones that she sent me after MQX.  And what fun would it be without one of the back?...  The backing fabric is a Laura Ashley print.  It shows the texture, but not all the stitching lines.  And that's my artistic muse, Picasso, eyeing the binding clips as potential toys!.

I love all your comments, and I hope that you have a great week looking at the Bloggers Quilt Festival quilts.

Stats...
size 65"x65"
techniques: machine pieced, hand appliqued
quilted by me on a longarm
Categories: wall quilt, professionally quilted, applique quilt

Bordering

I puttered a bit as I came up with this graded pink border.  Problem is, I think I puttered too much, and completely over-thought how to do the corners.  Tomorrow, I will remove the red, and replace the 3 pieces with a single triangle.  It will (1) be simpler, (2) have less seams, and (3) stand a change of having the corner point match well.  Aside from that, I think it is coming along.

I have a ton of client work right now, and much of it is custom.  As a result, I have been hitting my limit of how long I can stand to quilt at about noon or 1pm each day.  That is 5 hours of quilting for the day, which is plenty.  Then I get a walk (a little forced fresh air before we have snow is a good thing!@), and then I am free to play with some piecing.  This solid quilt is at 25", and will end up at about 40", eventually.  Time to go cut some foundations while my youngest whines some more over doing any homework...sigh

Solid Play

Yesterday, since the big green monster is of the longarm, and I was awaiting the arrival of 3 new quilts to quilt, I took the day to play with something new.  I know, what on earth am I thinking, another project???!  Yea, I hear ya, but who cares.  I have been thinking about solids for a while and wanted to play.  The color of the picture is horrible - the background is somewhere between celery and light taupe.  There are several other tones of this background color that will be in the quilt, making it look better.  These fabrics are from Moda's discontinued crossweaves collection.

My blocks are just under 9" finished, and were a bit finicky to make.  That's mostly my doing, being the anal retentive quilter when it comes to points.   Now, I have been a quilter and a piecer for a very long time.  I have made more than a hundred quilts, and I know quite a bit about how to piece accurately.  Or so I thought I did.  This project as taught this old dog a new trick though.

 My blocks above look pretty good.  The points are there, all shapes look like they are in good alignment.  But in the quilt I had designed, they would be placed on point, as below.  It is there that I have discovered I should have done something differently.  I should have devised the piecing so that diagonal rows were sewn, not the crossways ones (ie, making the block as a square).  Any slight meanderings of the diagonal seam are evident.  Live-n-learn.

I have played with what to do with these a lot.  I wondered if I could redesign the 40" quilt to have then not on point, but it just loses so much interest to do that.  That small of a quilt leaves no space to dither around; everything counts.  My final thought is that I hope that when the blocks are quilted (on point) that they look good, and don't show the things I see here.

Now, onto figuring out the rest of the quilt.  This is, afterall, supposed to be a "simple" quilt.  We all know, though, that I don't really know how to do simple :-)

Week's End

It's nearing the end of the 3rd week I have been working on this quilt.  On Tuesday, I'd had enough.  I was getting upset.  The green border was not coming out quite like I wanted.  I had a tension snag, had to unpick stitches, and silk thread is hard to remove .  Then I found a small pleat.  The vertical borders were not stitching as well as the ones across the frame.  Live and learn.  I should have quilted them AS I WENT, not after I got to the bottom.  It just seemed that the problems were happening one after another, and I was tired, and in no mood to deal with them.  When I went to bed Tuesday, I decided the quilt was coming off the following morning, and I'd deal with it in a few weeks.  When I awoke on Wednesday, I had changed my mind and dove right in on the red quilting.  I sort of look at this as mindless stitching.  The Dresden plates were SO simple - just follow the lines in the print of the fabric. Clever and effective.  The other dark cranberry shapes took a little thought, but aside from there being 24 of them, they were not very hard.  They look good, though, don't they??!

One thing I did on the red that I have never done is use a wicked thin bobbin thread.  The best matching thread I had is a Master Quilter 40wt poly by Wonderfil.  This company is from Canada, so not as many Americans probably use their products.  They are also a bit pricey, but my cheap thread standards.  I won this last year and have 15 cones of the thread, and I really like quilting with it!  That thread and the Invisifil are my favorite Wonderfil threads.  Anyhow, I have never used smaller than a 60wt in the bobbin.  In fact, I often encounter difficulty winding 60wt Bottomline, so I buy it in the prewound bobbins.  The best match I had for the thread I wanted on the top was either 50wt poly or 100wt Invisifil.  I stitched one Dresden in the 50wt and hated how thready it looked on the backside.  It got ripped out, and I learned how to wind a 100wt bobbin.  The end result is that the red is superfine on my green backing, barely showing at all.

 Here's my mostly round circles -- good enough for me.

I did get the quilt off of the frame today, and as I expected, it looks amazing.  The designs that are hard to envision on a large quilt, are most evident when it lays on the floor.  I'm not saying it is not without a few things to fix and tweak, but I'm more relieved now about the quilt than I was a few days ago.  Pictures???...not right away.  I expect I will get it finished to send it to MQX and other shows next spring/summer.

I got fantastic news today from the Quilting with Machines show in Ohio.  All three of the quilts I entered have received ribbons -- two third places and one second.  Maybe you can recognize them here...

I predict that life will calm down a bit now that the stress of quilting my own quilt is off for a while.  I have half a dozen client projects, and more on the way, but there is no stress like knowing YOU are holding up everyone else's work.  I'm going to take a day to play tomorrow with some new fabrics I have had for nearly a month now.  They arrived just before I started Monster Dresdens (it does still need a righteous name), but I couldn't justify doing anything with them with this looming quilt on the frame.  I have designed a small quilt with some Moda Crossweaves.  They are discontinued, as I understand it, but I found a vendor that still had some for about $5/yd and I got a bunch of pieces.  This quilt was (aren't they always) supposed to be simple, but I loved too many of the colors too much not to get them.  It will be under 40" finished so it can go to the small quilt category at shows (unlike the Intertwined quilt at QwM that is 40.5"!).  I wanted it simple with elegant quilting.  Hopefully I can pull off decent piecing considering how small those blocks are finished.

69 Hours and counting

Finally, after 2 weeks of quilting like a mad-man, I am on the bottom border.  It is coming along.  It took about 4-5 hours to get this much done today (it is a 5" space).  It's hard to get excited about the remaining 3 borders that need quilting when one takes this much time!

 The quilt will come off the frame at the end of the week, done or not.  I know it will still be incomplete, but I should have all 4 borders finished by then.  None of the deep pink has been stitched yet.  It's time to get going on some client work :-)

Quilting!! and a big win

The Big Green Monster (aka green modern Dresdens) has been on my machine for 5 days now.  The kids are safely off at school 7 hours a day and I am quilting more hours a day than I think I ever have to get this at least to a state that it can be safely removed.  Notice that I did not use the "done" word.  I won't even assume that I can finish it before the client quilts are piling up, but it does need to have the majority of the fill-work completed so it's adequately held together.

I discovered right off the bat that the green thread I had planned to use was too dark for the lime green outer border.  You'd think that I could have checked that sometime in the last month or so and ordered a lighter shade, eh?  Nope.  I figured it out the day I hoped to actually quilt the border.  Today, 4 days later, the paler green thread arrived.  I was not patient enough to wait, so I have to go back and quilt the basted border when I am done with the center.  Pray for no pleats.

So far, there are areas of the quilting that I love, and areas that I might raise an eyebrow and question why I thought that would be good.  I love the silk thread.  It.is.awesome.  Super.duper.awesome.  Want more, Santa...must have!  All 20 of the Dresdens will be quilted as below.  I have not done the pink center yet; will get after the rest is done.  The thread is a heavier-weight so I don't want to be constantly adjusting tension as I go back and forth between Glide and silk.  Note that I echo quilted 1/4" around the Dresden.  Looks nice, I think.

On day 3, though, I was so freaking gung-ho to test out a filler that I failed to outline the top center Dresden!  I could have screamed.  There's no way I am pulling out as much of this silk thread that would have to be removed to outline the plate, so the outlining is reserved just for the corners. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

I'm using some fills that I have not really used on a competition quilt before.  I'm not really sure about the 1/2" curved-crosshatch.  It's nothing overly original.  I have seen it many times before on show quilts and liked it.  So, tell me why I don't love it here?.  It just seems like a lot of it.  I really wish I'd chosen some free-flowing feathers...except that when I designed the quilting for this quilt I wanted to avoid just putting feathers everywhere.  I want a variety of textures.  Fingers crossed.

Above you can see my "modified prairie points".  I'm a bit of a rebel.  I wanted to try them because they seemed era-appropriate for a Dresden quilt, and the triangles look great, but I couldn't get over the flaps flapping all over the place so I stitched them all down.  Prairie points no more.

There are 9 ivory blocks, and eight of them are exactly like this one.  The center is a little different.  It turned out really well.  The band of pebbles will create a sub-frame within the quilting.  I designed this, and actually traced the pattern onto all 8 blocks with a pen.  I am all about free-quilting feathers, but I really wanted uniformity for these.

Here's a fun fill I drafted for this quilt.  Those cross-hatched frames go up the diagonal of the quilt to frame the patch of 16 Dresdens on pointe.   This is 22 hours into a 102" quilt...maybe at the 30% completion mark.  Maybe.

I got word that my quilt Meet Me at Giverny shown here took a first place at the Wisconsin Quilt Expo!!  It sounds like the quilts there are really spectacular - hand and machine quilted both.  If you are in the Madison area, it's well worth a trip.

Progressing right along

I've stopped keeping track of my hours on this quilt...MANY. I quilt about 3-4 hours a day. The 52" ivory central part of this quilt is now down to the micro-fillers to be called done. OK, there are 2 sections that have to be ripped out on account of Sunday/Monday's bad adventures with mistensioning, but I may do that when it is off the frame, where I can get comfortable. It's gonna take a few dozen hours! Yesterday, I started the curved-crosshatching of these 20" feathered stars. I was a little uncertain right off the bat if the hatching density seemed dense enough, considering the fact that I have quilted the rest of the quilt to within an inch of it's life.

After I finished the center part of the stars today, I have decided that the very traditional stars are just fine. They stand out in part because they are less dense. I may checkerboard-fill the CChatching later with silk, but for now this is it. All 4 of the center feathered wreaths came out good, considering they are completely freehanded.

The four corners of the quilt are also now finished. I will likely come back after the quilt is blocked and paint the swirly vine to make it more prominent. The texture is simply amazing from the back of the quilt. I can hardly wait to have it off the frame to see the back!

The view from below...but the texture is lost. It's kind of like a stained glass window.

And lastly, I ended to day going back to the back-filling. I don't think this will take forever, but I have not really been the best judge of time thus far. We'll see!

So, my question to you is this: Are you going to MQX next week???

Applique Project(s)

It is no secret that I do a lot of hand applique. You have seen some of the quilts I have appliqued over the recent years. (or you can look here, here and here). It started as I needed something to do while my students were taking exams. And then I got so I liked doing it in the evenings because I don't want to leave my husband on the couch alone and go to the basement to sew (where all my machines are set up). Without something to sew on at night after the kids are in bed, I will just fall asleep in my chair. And that is pittiful. This is my latest and probably wildest creation. I have had these boldly colored hand-dyes for a couple years. My husband bought me a stack of 24 FQ for my birthday a few bdays back. I used all the purple and aqua ones on one of the quilts shows in the above links, and needed to find something for the red, yellow and orange ones. As you can see, I have used a good bit of purple as well. I guess it is just in my blood. All of the tans are really scrappy (as in there are 5 or 6 different shades actually used)...they were left over from my Sea Glass quilt.
I have finished stitching the border "ribbons" and am now making all the necessary adjustments to them as I miter all the corners and attach the border triangles to the body of the quilt. I have a number of tiny circles to still add after that is done. My hope is to get this done and into the quilting queue so it can be finished by the mid-Summer, but I'm not sure that's in the cards. Quilting at Casa Quilts of Love is fairly busy right now, and this is a large quilt not to be rushed.

In the couple days of downtime lately, I started another broken star, this time out of batiks. I really love the way the first one I did came out, and thought it was perfectly suited for a watery look. The setting squares are paper pieced, which you should know by now I loathe paper piecing. It's a pain, and is slow, and oh, so messy. But, nevertheless, this is how these "reed"like blocks are done. Two down, another 6 needing the 3 parts assembled. You should know to expect from me that there will be hand applique on these squares...something to jazz these up a bit, and give this smewhat traditional type star a personal and unique twist.

As one that does a considerable amount of applique, I must make sure you are aware of a wonderful pair of scissors. These are serrated-edge scissors, that were developed by Karen Kay Buckley. I learned of these 18 months ago when I tookher hand-applique class, but being cheap, I didn't buy them then. I actually go them for Christmas from my mom this year. I have the larger size, and they are a perfect size for hand cutting fabrics. They grip the fabric and give you a perfect cut. Trust me, these are a great thing to have if you applique. Not sure how I made it without them this long.

Progress on the Little Things

As you know, we got a new kitten a week ago (the orange blur). On account of his constant need for snuggling, I have hardly done any hand stitching in the evening. This is a regular play session (aka butt whopping) with our other cat Sally, who has adjusted to his presence nicely. I have, however, been a blocking fool. My first quilt (65" square) is done (the drying that is - took 5 days in the winter air), the binding and piping are machined on, and I have started the hand stitching for the binding. It will probably take close to a week to finish this. I have also ordered a bunch of crystals for this quilt. The dynamic carpenters star will look fantastic with a little sparkle. Not every quilt needs sparkles, but this onewill be awesome with it. It's heading to MQX in April for all of you that are curious.

Here's a peek of the backside of the above quilt, with our newest baby (recently named Picasso) in the background. That is one sweet kitty!

My second personal quilt had a little bit of last-minute finishing on the quilting a few days ago. I spent last week ripping out all the SID because I discovered that the tension was not so great. What a pain... I put it back in in about 2 hours time (8 hours to remove, 2 hours to restitch!). It's much better this time. Yesterday, I declared it DONE, cut off all the excess backing, and today it is soaking wet and on the blocking board. We are anxious to get the furniture in the bedroom back in order. Considering the fact that it is 7F outside today (and my bedroom is a brisk 59F), it will probably take a week to dry this quilt. At $80-90 per week to heat our house, It's not worth jacking up the bedroom heat just for a quilt that I don't need done for a while! The piping and binding for this one are all done too - just waiting for a dry quilt. I do, however, need to get to work making/designing some labels for all my quilts nearing completion that will likely be printed off by Spoonflower.

BTW...anybody like Gumbo?? It was our New Year's Day meal, and a favorite of mine. I'm considering a Gumbo post if anyone is interested. Have a warm week.

Stars & Cables

First off, because our second favorite thing to read about on a quilt blog is food, here's the well-asked for recipe for the chocolate bourbon pecan pie I made for Turkey Day. Trust me, it's not for those of you counting calories, but it is so yummy.

I finished this quilt up earlier last week for a client. It's rather small, 43"x55". Bette accuracy would have come from paper piecing the stars, but she chose not to. From afar, the accuracy is somewhat of a mute point, as it is not really evident. But, she gave me a picture of how someone else had quilted it with large sweeping curves, and I found thisextremely difficult to implement neatly when star points were not always where they should have been.
Never the less, she was very happy with the end result. It is being made for her son, who is chairing a PTA raffle for a school out in Kansas. I used a second layer of a poly batt to give additional poof. I must stop buying these from Joann, however, because this Mountain Mist batting is just abismal. For all you quilters that love things on your quilts to "pop", invest in wool or use Hobbs polydown. The suff at Joann's is just plain disappointing. Cheap, yes. Not great though.

As the closeup show, the stars didn't puff nearly as much as I wanted. I used a cotton batting that the client brought as the bottom layer (and Warm & Natural is just too thin for my taste too). I quilted 2 different fillers in the sky background, and randomly chose a dozen or so stars to do microquilting on to highlight them (using the gold Glide thread). The effect of the gold was very evident on the back...

(and you can see the second filler that I used too) - line that follow the curves through the stars. Now, as a batting comparison, here's a picture of where I am on my quilt, which has a layer of Hobbs 80/20 and a layer of Legacy wool. Notice how the cable motifs pop. There's no saggy look there. Use of good batting most definitely does make a difference. Don't sacrifice here because you think it is on the inside of the quilt and won't matter. It most certainly does.
My cables are free-handed, and hence some of the longer lines are not as straight as I'd hoped for. I'll decide after this is off the machine if I need to pick out and straighten some of them. It's got pretty nice texture though :-)

Progress on the Center

This is not finished, but is definitely taking shape. Looks like kids will be home the next 5 days so quilting time will be limited, mostly in the predawn hours. Gotta make a chocolate bourbon pecan pie tomorrow to get ready for Turkey day.

Progress

If you have not heard me previously, I LOVE GLIDE THREAD!!! Oh my goodness, this thread sews like a hot knife through butter. I have used other trilobal poly threads, and had issues with shredding or little pokies on the topside. Not with this thread. I love it so much, I ordered 5 cones last night. Fot those of you that like a good deal, 5000m of this thread costs only $7.20! A bargain on top of it being great thread. I foresee using this gold thread so much I got another cone. It's like all the bene's of a gold metallic, without the hassles.I have spent 12 hours so far (I like to get up super early), and have SID'd the entire quilt, as well as worked on several sections. I am pleased with this very-showy floral vinework on the purple. I will backfill around the pattern with a blendable plum thread.The feather through the greens looks nice, but I haven't decied if it is "fancy enough" for this quilt. It looks good, mind you, but it almost seems run of the mill. I am aiming for a little bit more outside the box .

I have done 3 of the 4 of these squares, and I like how they are turning out.

I spent a while this morning designing these triangles. There are 16 of them andthey need to have a good impact. After doing one, I stopped, thinking that this will get picked out. The poppy seems hard to disinguish. Got any better thoughts??
Oh, how I love to quilt my own quilts (and I seem to be being a better than usual customer too!)~