A QUILTY CONSCIENCE: Design Wall Monday-Sept 5

Here we are! In my favorite month! September! All the benefits of summer, warm days and blue skies but you can see fall starting to happen. Love it!

On my design wall is this small bowtie. I will piece the blocks today....after I replace one of the weaker (red w/white) blocks in the lower right corner. Then I will continue working on my larger bowtie. Larger in number of blocks not in size of blocks. The larger one is done in reproductions and is a different setting. Not locked into any setting in particular yet but there is some great inspiration over at Flickr. I think I have like twenty more blocks to make.

And I know you have all been rooting for me and my August UFO...another small quilt left over from the '80ies. I was going to donate it unfinished and then decided to finish it as a practice piece as it was already sandwiched and basted. I did cross hatching in the middle, trying different marking techniques.I decided painters tape is the easiest but I need to increase my "library" to different sizes. I did "el's", like the lower case cursive version of an L", and "ee's" like the lower case version of the letter "e", in the narrow blue border. I was surprised how much I liked it. It looked too simple to be effective but it's great! And easy to do. We all know how to write l's and e's so it's easy to take it to FMQ. On the border I did stippling. Yes. I am still practicing stippling. My stippling started out "okay" as in it held the quilt layers together, and then it continued to get better, prettier. At the end of the day, I liked it. Until.....I stopped for the night. When I picked it up again the next morning my "flow" wasn't quite as good. I know! Practice, practice, practice. Anyway, I like this quilt more now (a lesson to be learned from this?) and I think it has enough blues and greens to work as a tablecloth at our beach place. So instead of donating it, I will use it. Here it is:

Trust me, the colors are much better in person. I just realized this was before the binding was added. It's on! Minty green solid.

And one more thing this week. I made a doll! Thanks to Beths instructions over at:

http://lovelaughquilt.blogspot.com/2011/08/

I'm going to make one more doll today and adjust the proportions a little. Beths instructions are very general and that allows each doll to be uniquely different. Just like us!