>Follow the leader

>One of the ladies in my art quilters’ group is also a quilting teacher and she kept showing us her many samples for her (Ricky Tim’s) Convergence class. Several of us had to try it too. I had purchased the book earlier but just never took the time to try it. As many of my friends know, I love zebras. I have a little bit of zebra in every room. I chose an all over zebra body print and one with foliage and zebras to constrast with my mottled green print. I picked up the orangy red from the mottled print to put in my inner border. Then I realized what I had trimmed away from the edges could be sewn back on in reverse order as a border. I added the zebras at the pool as a fused fabric patch. It is still a top but I’m on a roll finishing in February so maybe it will get finished.

>Busy Day

>Today the art quilters’ group comes to my house. I am in the middle of baking a batch of cookies and finishing the last minute cleaning. They will vote on my “beads or no beads” from an earlier post.
This is what I hope to get back to, free motion embroidery flowers on some of my quilts.

>Strip Pieced Watercolor

> If you are a fan of Deanna Spingola’s Strip Pieced Watercolor, you may recognize this one from “More Strip-Pieced Watercolor Magic”. It is on page 74 and also on the back cover.

Deanna was at a guild meeting where I gave a program and saw my colorwash quilts with raw edge flowers appliqued on them. She called me the next morning to see if I would do a quilt for her upcoming book. When I met with her she requested that I add my raw edge flowers since it would be different than the others in the book.

I had just gone through a divorce a year earlier after 34 years of marriage. This was a good confidence building project for me to undertake at that time. I was able to lose myself in the creation, using her guidelines for the background and my own designs for the flowers.

I applique by machine with the quilt top in a hoop and a loose cut piece of fabric on top. I don’t use any fusible because I like little the raised effect of the fabric. I start free motion stitching like pen and ink drawing and add each piece of fabric as I am ready for it.

Here are some close up pictures of the free motion drawing by machine.