Middling Along

I'm back in the middle of Rose Boll this week. Aren't these fabrics gorgeous? I just love them! Click any photo to see them all full sized.

I have to say, it is already looking better than I dared to dream. When I bought the fabric last fall, I admit I felt some guilt about it. Couldn't I have made do with what I had?

Now I have no doubt that it was the right call to buy all the extra reds. The deep reds are needed to hold their own with all the florals.

And, I certainly didn't want to skimp on florals!

The mix of prints is so much fun. This time the pictures really do not do it justice.

Anyway, the middles are all done. The sawtooth edges are next!

Whisperin' Turkey

If the name of these Bonnie Hunter blocks is Talkin' Turkey, then this low volume colourway must surely be whisperin!

When I was deciding whether or not to start this project, the idea of these inverse, white blocks was the clincher. And I'm so happy with how they turned out!

I already knew I was on the right track when I finished the string units:

I really think this is my favourite colour scheme.

I've been saying for a while that I'm ready to close the book on all these text fabrics (yes, sorry). But now that I am near the end on this Warm Wishes fabric, I will miss it. It has been just the right touch in so many projects! Maybe I will have to look for some more text fabrics after all.

Anyway, once again only three blocks are needed for this month's colour.

But, I definitely hope to re-visit these white strings in a future project! We'll see how things shake out. 

And as always, you can see all the other variations on "light" at the RSC link up, right here.

High Summer Stitching

Doesn't look like a lake, does it? That's Lake Ontario, looking southwest down the length of the lake from Bluffer's Park in Toronto. We've had some wonderful high summer weather this week, and I took my camera out for a drive.

Here are the Scarborough Bluffs, with lovely puffy white clouds (aka source material):

And the marina, with puffy clouds and shiny boats:

A good day! Some memories to re-visit when it's below freezing this winter.

Inside, I finally finished edge stitching the fusible applique blocks that I last shared in June, here and here. They are for my quilt "El Camino SoCal," based on the cover quilt from Nancy Rink's book El Camino Real. And even though summer is still in full swing, you can see that my sunny patch on the wall is getting narrower:

After considerable thought, I decided to top stitch the flowers as if they had individual petals. It was a lot easier to run straight and pivot, rather than inching around all the inside curves.

I want this quilt to have a bright, casual feel, so I just stitched the petals by eye.

I did the same thing on the smaller "forget-me-nots."

The yellow (and citron) centres are reverse applique, which is why the top stitching is only on the purple.

Here's the whole block stitched:

And the last block of the five I've done so far:

They remind me of poppies.

I think this block benefited quite a lot from the top stitching. It really helped to separate and define all the light coloured leaves.

And I'm still happy with my choice of dark red thread for all the edge stitching. It shows up well on every colour.

These blocks have been lying flat on my sewing table for two months, because I didn't want to fold them until they were stitched. I've had to move them every time I sew. Now I can finally put them away!

I feel like I'm at a bit of a crossroads now, and I'm not sure which project I'll pick up next. It's been nothing but this project and Technicolor Turkey for two months, so maybe it's time to give some love to some of my other projects!

And the next Ad Hoc Improv Quilters challenge is to use words in a quilt, which is right up my alley. You can read about it here. I have at least three wordy ideas that I've been sitting on, and I thought it would be easy to just pick one. But...I'm feeling the need to be more spontaneous. So we'll see what happens!