More Cloister

Tonight I started quilting the brickwork on Cloister.  I decided to use a finicky thread, a very thin almost hairlike thing - because I didn't want any color to show, just the quilting lines. It took me half an hour of practicing and testing and tension adjusting to get it right before going back to the actual piece.  But then I was too lazy to change the large needle in the machine so there are some poky holes. Go figure.  Hopefully the holes will fade a bit.  I marked out the lines with disappearing ink, which always seems to fade away before I'm ready, except when I want it gone, then I worry it's not going to disappear and my beautiful piece will be covered with purple ink.  ACK.  In general, though, I like the way they turned out so far.

In other quilting news, I spent yesterday at the La Conner Quilt Fest.  It was a four-day deal, but I only attended Sunday, and spent 9 - 4 in a class.  So I had very little time to see the quilts.  I did get a $10 DVD that was supposed to be pictures of all the quilts, which I was eager to get home and look at, but its a slideshow format with terrible resolution and very bad pictures.  Oh well. The theme was the Appliqué Society so there was a strong focus on that.  Which I'd like to learn, but not right now.

The class was good. Not great, fantastic, but good enough.  I learned what I hoped to learn.  There's more detail on my "Classes Taken" page.

I've been reading and watching video tutorials about paper piecing, and studying Dear Jane to try to figure out which blocks to tackle first.  I want to try paper piecing but it's rather confusing at first.

I have to put some time in this week to get Orange Chair done in time for show and tell at the guild on the 11th (and to display until Halloween).  But I also want to get Cloister quilted and implement some of the other suggestions from the critique, like more glow to the windows, and more browns in the leaves...  I really do like the positive types of critiques that are given.

And as if I don't have enough projects in the works, the clock is ticking on the October challenge over on the Artitude Blog.  The challenge is "Still Life" and I have an idea I'm exploring for a Halloween theme - a pumpkin and a skull... but what else, I'm not sure.   And why I'm working on such realistic topics when i always thought I wanted to work abstractly... !?!?  At least I have a good supply of orange fabric to choose from!