Let the Sun Shine -- Brackets, Feathers and Straight Lines

Hi all -

I've done some more quilting on my Let the Sun Shine quilt. I started off by quilting the brackets that I marked in my last post. I spent a bit of time trying to decide what thread to use. These are background areas so I want the quilting to be subtle, but I really like the designs I chose so I want the quilting to be visible. I know I want the lines to be thin, so I went to my standby background thread -- 100 wt silk. So I pulled out all of my silks and started looking at the colors. First I looked at blues. I didn't want to match the fabric color, so I looked at lighter and darker blues, but they were all too visible for my taste. I thought about grays, but they still looked too visible for me. Finally, I tried some greens and ended up choosing a dark khaki green. Not the color I expected to use, but I really like how it looks.

I stared with the brackets and the feathers in the middle. I'm better at shorter feathers, so this was going to be an easier area for me. I did all of these without breaking thread. Here's what it looked like on the back where you can see the quilting better:

Not perfect, but I'm still liking it. While I was in the groove, I went to the outer brackets and feathers. These feathers were more difficult for me because I needed the plumes to be long and thin:

I did better on these than I expected. The next part I wanted to add was the straight lines. I picked up Lisa Calle's longarm rulers for quilting 1/16" and 1/8" parallel straight lines and decided to give them a try with my new ruler foot. I love them and will definitely be getting the other widths! Here is how the center area turned out with the 1/6" lines:

And the outer area with the 1/8" lines:

 And a view of the whole thing on the back:

And on the front:

I think this quilting creates a really dramatic frame for the center of the quilt. It's subtle, yet visible. I'm very pleased.

I also worked on getting all of my class supplies together for Houston. It always seems like Houston is further away than it is, and I end up scrambling to get everything I need. This year, I have everything gathered and ready to go:

The only thing I didn't already have is some write-on transparencies which I've ordered from Amazon and will be here in a couple of days. So everything is in the suitcase, ready to go.

Fall colors have also come to the area. Here are a couple of pictures from my yard before it goes away and winter sets in:

Lance and Wesley came out to help me with my pictures:

Hope you're having a great fall!!

Nancy