Flying Geese

I am trying something new for me this month. I've decided to just work on one thing at a time! LOL. My quilt guild will have their next show in April, and I've decided that Riviera Star, which is based on Judy Niemeyer's Prairie Star foundations, will be my main entry. So I made a plan, and if I stick to it I'll have the top done by August.

Today I finished the eight Flying Geese units. Here they are laid out with the Melon Spike units I made previously:

I think it's looking promising. It certainly meets my dad's requirement to be "lively!" It's fun to play around with the pieces, too:

I've given myself two and a half weeks to sew the next group, which will combine with these units into square blocks. I've also changed my colourway a bit, which I'll tell you about tomorrow. Onwards!

Summer Sampler, Take Two

Back in March I came to an inglorious end on my first run at this great Summer Sampler from Janlynn:

It didn't take me long to decide to start over will all new materials. I bought some Cashel linen (28 ct) in light sand, which is really more like light yellow, and proper DMC floss. I've been working it for a while now, and it is all so much nicer to stitch!

Rather than repeating the section that I goofed on before, I started at the bottom this time:

My plan is to fully complete one section at a time, backstitching and all. A professional stitcher gave me this tip as a way to minimize the tedium of the backstitching at the end, and so far it is working for me. Next up will be the little cruise ship motif.

Remember this fabric? No wonder it reminded me of Hawaii!

Anyway, I also want to apologize, because not only have I not been keeping up with my blog, I haven't had a chance to keep up with everyone else's either. I've been dealing with a health issue this spring that is fairly serious, but completely fixable. I think that when it's all over my life will improve considerably, but until then I may be absent once in a while. In the meantime, happy stitching!