catlinyemaker

This was a week of wrestling with everything. I wrestled with getting a good photo of the Christmas Village quilt, finished last week. After three tries, finally produced a picture I’m happy to share. I’m really pleased with how this quilt turned out, especially since so much of the center panel was done flying by the seat of my pants.
( Other quilty wrestling matches... )

The trees are thwarting me. So far I’ve sewn one with the green fabric wrong side up, and one that was perfect until I realized that I’d made it an inch too wide. The two lightest ones are both wrong. I suspect I’ll still use both of them – they’re not that wrong.

On the “color gets the credit but value does the work” front, I like the medium value trees, but, as you can see, they do a nice job fading into the medium blue background. I’ll probably still use them, too. Theoretically this is supposed to be a “nighttime” scene, and those medium and dark green trees fade like real trees do at night.

And Mister Guy remains convinced that there is no quilt which cannot be improved by the addition of a cat, even if it already has two sewn on there.

I finished the first nine blocks (three more blocks to go, plus the fancy border) of the Christmas Village quilt, in a happy burst of creativity coinciding with Judy Laquidara’s October Quilt-till-you-drop weekend. (I know she calls it something kinder, but what can I say? I’m not nearly as nice as she is.) Those weekends are a great excuse to push myself to get past barriers and take the time to really make some progress, and that boost helps me all month long.


( Quick and dirty applique techniques, for limited values of both "quick" and "dirty"... )

Click to embiggen if desired.

The dishes never got more than a lick and a promise all weekend, because I was too busy having fun with quilting during the Quiltathon. We took Saturday and drove to Turlock to check out RV Parks; that’s where we’ll be going in November after Gilroy. But the rest of the time was quilt-full.

Holly berries is done, the binding made and set aside. The Holly Berries pattern I’m working on just needs one more day of writing and then it will be ready to go off for beta-ing. Photos to come, as I kept forgetting to set up for pictures while the light was good.
( New quilt: design decisions and how they were made... )