10 Degrees and Falling!!

My tan does look a little weird when there is snow piled everywhere and where the high today was a whole 10 degrees. That will be considered warm, we are told, by Friday....


Anyway, it was a great day to work in Marcia's studio on my Bird of Paradise piece. I made some progress today plus helped solve some of our world's problems (probably the ones of lesser significance!) We had a good group of four plus our gracious hostess and host. Poor Marcia had to work again on real computer stuff so that put a damper on the day for her. Not a lot of piecing got accomplished at her end of the room but she did help solve the world problems between customer calls!



This was a piece that Priscilla (our resident non-quilter -- haha) made and which the ladies convinced her to send to SAQA. It has beautiful beading on it which is hard to see unless you double click on this image. Thanks heavens she has lots of fabric from Thousands of Bolts.com to work from!!


This is a piece that Marcia had hidden away but which she is resurrecting. She is adding some more grey to the white areas on the side -- I really like this one with its unusual color pallette.

This was the piece that Jeanne started in the Nancy Crow workshop and I really liked the colors in this one as well! Unusual and very striking.

Priscilla was working on the wolf quilt which is getting finished plus starting on a Parrot Quilt -- all of us had an opinion on the direction that should take but I know Priscilla will pick the best solution and will come up with a great composition.

Pat had used one of her pieces as a pattern to create a new piece that is more in Pat's style as opposed to Nancy's plain colored fabrics.

I was of course working on my Bird of Paradise which was derived from a couple of pictures I took in California of my favorite flower. I had used those pictures as the basis for an applique version of this quilt about 7 years ago. I had always wanted to do a pieced version and change things a bit. I am trying to use many of the techniques I learned in Ruth's class but am unquestionably adding my own way of doing things. In Ruth's class alot of time was spent auditioning fabrics -- I really don't do that at all. I pull out a few, see if they go together in one small spot and go for it!! If I don't like it later, then I applique over in small areas or rip it out if I haven't gone too far. I tend to work in sections as you will see from my photos.

Above was my piece as it started the day. The bottom right corner had been finished and I had pinned up background fabrics around the rest of the piece to get some idea of whether I liked the mix or not.

This is how the piece looked at the end of the day with the bottom left corner filled in and progress made on the leaves and one of the flowers. It is really like a jig saw puzzle when you start putting some of the curvy skinny pieces back together again. Seems okay so far and definitely better than my earlier version of this drawing!!

Have to decide what to do next as I am getting down the home stretch with this one and I have three or four days of freezing, freezing cold and I will just sit inside and work on it!! The leftover pot roast certainly tasted good tonight!