Living alone

The longer I live by myself the more I like it.  I eat what I want when I want.  Nobody to object if I'm too tired after work to cook anything and just have a bowl of cereal and call it good.  Nobody else's messes to clean up after.  If something is a mess, it's my mess.  When I put something somewhere, it stays there.  Plus this place is small so I have to shuffle things around when I want to sew.  There's nobody here to bitch about having to move the ironing board to use the bathroom.  Ahhhhhhhhh.  I don't know why I waited this long to dump his sorry ass.

I'm about ready to quilt the June pencil series wall hanging.  I think it turned out really cute.  I used the tree, gone fishing sign and the fish from the original and just made a lot more fish.  I need to get it quilted this evening after it cools off a bit so I can do the binding tomorrow.

I'll try and get pics of the May wall hangings when I bring it home and get them posted soon.  It's been so long since I signed in to my Picasa album I'm not sure I'll remember the password though.

all the leaves

I finally quit adding leaves.  It has 97 leaves.  I got the flowers cut out and they're pinned on.  At least there are only 9 of them.  I did change them from the original.  The original flowers were too pointy.

40 leaves!

I have 40 leaves on the wall hanging now.  I took off some of the short stems on the bottom and I'm going to add one long vine from the left to the right below the one that's already there.  I'm pretty sure 67 leaves aren't going to be enough.  There are three flowers down the left side and three across that bottom vine with the cardinal between the last two.

And this pattern started off with 16 holly leaves!

previews!

The first picture is the flowers and leaves just scattered out on the background in the general areas where they're going.  There will also be a cardinal on the lower right between the last two flowers.  In this photo it's just laying on the ironing center.  The brown line around in the center is the pearl cotton threads I'm going to use for the vine.  I had thought maybe about cutting it in pieces but I think it'll look better if it's one solid line with branches coming off of it.  The flowers will be solid enough after I get them backed with thin batting you won't be able to see the vine thru it but you'll still have the impression of the vine.

In the second picture I have the background almost quilted.  I still have to pull the thread ends from quilting the top and bottom borders to the back and quilt around the outside of the accent strip.  I really like the way these snowflakes look.  I need to make two more small ones for the left hand side.  The quilting in the borders is asymetrical, there are 3 lines on one side and 4 on the other side.  There are 10 lines of quilting in both the top and bottom borders.

Next I'll couch down the vine and start appliquing the leaves.  Tomorrow.  When my husband isn't home.



zag

 I got some of the "snowflake" blocks made.  Hated them.  Snowflakes are six sided.  The blocks are 8 point stars.  Plus they do not line up in the centers.  Yes, my seams are consistent and pretty accurate.  So, I redesigned that part too.


It still bugged me there wasn't any of the added in fabric in the center so  decided to take that apart and add some in.  In the process I decided to take the dark purple out of the center and just use it as an accent strip between the center and the border.  In the pic I just have squares pinned over the dark purple ones to see how it would look.  Since I had to take it apart to take out the dark purple and add in the border fabric I also enlarged it by one square each way.  With as many leaves as I have I thought it would probably look scrunched into the center space.

I have top and bottom border to add today and then I can baste and do the basic quilting on it before I start the applique.