Heartfelt Blocks Finished

 Hi all -

I hope everyone is doing well! I had a fun week! I attended a two-day daytime retreat. It was my first time with this group, who meet for two days every other month. I knew some of the ladies from my quilt guilds, but others were new to me. It is a wonderful group and I look forward to getting to know each of them better! Now I'm getting ready for a three-day daytime retreat this week. It's crazy to go to back-to-back retreats, but we're getting into the season where I'm more likely to stay home because of the weather and I have a friend who is also attending the retreat.

At home this week, I've been working on my Heartfelt quilt. I got all of the blocks finished and have started putting them together. So far, I just have them sewn together in pairs.

Heartfelt

For the setting triangles, the pattern has you sew together six squares in a triangle shape and then trim off the jagged side to make a triangle. I decided to wait until the quilt is finished and quilt it with the jagged edges along the sides, then trim them off when I trim the quilt during binding. I felt this was a safer way to do things. Now that I have the blocks made, the top should go together fairly quickly. I won't be taking this project to this week's retreat since it's already on the design wall, but I look forward to finishing the top after the retreat. As I've been piecing the blocks, I've been thinking about how to quilt this quilt. The fabrics are so wild that the quilting won't show much. So, I'm thinking about quilting it with straight lines using the walking foot. I can follow the edges of the bricks in the log cabin blocks, giving me 3/4" spacing except at the centers of the blocks where I'll have 1.5" spacing. I think this will result in an interesting cross-hatch pattern on the back (which also probably won't be seen because of the fabrics, but I'll enjoy it). 

At the retreat this week, I worked on the hand embroidery in my Wild Women Don't Get the Blues quilt designed by Karen K. Stone. I did a lot of chatting and looking through my books to decide on stitches to use, so I only got three blocks finished and started on a fourth.

Wild Women Don't Get the Blues - Blocks

For one of the blocks, I stitched buttonhole wheels. 

Wild Women Don't Get the Blues - Buttonhole Wheels

One problem I've found with buttonhole wheels is that the wheel collapses if you brush your finger from the outside of the wheel to the center (sorry I didn't get a picture of this to show what I mean). This would be a problem in a quilt that gets used and washed. I thought about couching the outside edges of the wheels to hold them in place, but I like all of my stitching to enhance the design. It dawned on me that I could put a hat on each of the sections of the wheel. I made sure that the bottom points of the hat surrounded the stitch in the wheel to anchor it in place. I really like how this looks and the buttonhole wheels are very secure now!

I've also made more progress on my current Scarfscape designed by Laura Nelkin. I'm now halfway finished with the main body of the scarf.

Scarfscape

The color doesn't show up very well in the picture, but so far we've transitioned from a dark green to a dark red violet. The color transitions are really beautiful! We should still be in the purple when the main body of the scarf is finished, then we'll move into a yellow orange in the lace border. I love all the fun colors!!

Nancy