Practice

I've been practicing a feather fill for squares that I saw on Kay Bell's blog, and decided to give it a try on fabric but my practice panel is a rectangle.  Could be worse.  Could be better.  Definitely organic.

One of my UFO's, waiting to be quilted is the Puce 'Treuse Goose (On Spruce).  I bought this fabric on a whim, just to make a quilt with that name.  (The backing has a pine branch fabric.)

After a couple doodling attempts on paper, I worked out this quilting design.  The feathers will be on the geese (ha ha ha)  with the connecting sections of v-shaped circles.

Note to self - don't like variegated thread for pebbles as it creates random weird bold circles.

And finally, in an attempt to like (and be good at) feathers, I've been trolling the internet looking for examples that I like.  Judi Madsen came to my rescue with this swirl and feather filler.   According to Amazon, my copy of her book Quilting Wide Open Spaces should be arriving today, so I may have some other practice pieces to share by the end of the weekend.

UFOs

I've had UFO's on the brain lately.  It started when I reorganized the sewing area.  Then I had to decide what to take to work on for the West Yellowstone UFQ weekend.  There are a lot more than I thought I had.  I found the angel and star blocks that my girls made in early grade school.  I sewed them together this weekend with the long lost items.

I also realized that my projects fall into 4 categories:  UFO (Unfinished Objects), WIP (Work in Progress), Archive (things I'll never finish but will keep for historical value) and a category I'll call NEP (Next Evil Plan).

I have a pile of UFO's I plan to get finished by Christmas so I can get a move on with other projects.  The good news is that when I pulled all of them out recently, I liked them again.  I think they became UFOs  because I started disliking them.  The Ojibwe beadwork inspired quilt was annoying me because of the repeated elements.  I've done more annoying repetitions lately, so it looks reasonable now.  A round robin project was abandoned as it didn't seem to go together well.  I've done more free-form / abstract quilts now and think it looks great.  My new trick is going to be finishing the old UFO's without having my WIP become my new UFOs.