Progressing slowly

Well there is not much to tell right now. I am trying to find the time to quilt but lots has been going on in my "other life" too. I have found an hour here and an hour there though and hopefully
will keep moving forward.

When my back and hands start getting stiff from being at my machine too long I have started the sketches for my next quilt. So far I am excited about it. It will be totally different from my previous work and in bright vibrant colors. It makes me feel good to go down a totally different path sometimes. Plus winter is returning soon and working on this new one will take away the winter blahs!

Back from quilt Expo!

I am back from going to the Madison Quilt Expo and seeing my quilt hanging along with all the other beautiful, artistic, outstanding works of art. It was amazing as usual and although I did not win a prize, I did win just by being accepted. I learned a lot during the show, have all sorts of ideas for new pieces, bought a bunch of fat quarters of some interesting fabrics not usually found in my local shoppes and had just a day of fun. I went with my quilting sister, Bonnie, my good friend, Claudia, my daughter Molly, and my niece, Sarah. We also brought my 84 year old Mother who met my 85 year old Aunt and they went off touring on their own at their own pace. My brother Jeff came late in the day to see the show and my quilt. I feel honored and now have the new goal of winning a prize! (One of these years. :) ) My daughter decided to begin rug hooking and needle punching and found a few items for that. So one day perhaps I will be able to show you some of her work. After the show we all went out to eat and when finished with dinner my son, Jon showed up with his wife Becky and my grandson Max just to congratulate me and see the family. So you can see that I am a winner no matter what. Now, back to quilting on "Whose There?" I will be entering "Turtle Soup" in my local Quilt Guild's Show (The Sheboygan County Quilt Guild). It will be held Saturday September 27th! So I am looking forward to that next. If you live locally be sure to go to that it is well worth it.

Ready to Quilt

Well I believe I am finished with the top and ready to start quilting and embellishing. I am happy with the results and think the quilting will add all that is needed to make the water reflection look
better and the leaves pop. I am excited to start!

Continued progress

Monday afternoon I found some time to work on the quilt again. It was one of those days where everything started coming together and I feel like I made some good progress. I used some oil pastels to highlight some areas on leaves that I just felt needed some extra life and also for the reflection on the water. I am counting on the quilting to do the rest and I sure hope it does as right now it does not look anything like what I envision. Cross your fingers that that all comes out in the quilting. But in using the oil pastels I found that ironing over them blends the colors into each other and also diffuses it a bit. So you use a brighter color than what you want in the final process.
I enjoyed testing this in different areas of this quilt and am happy with the results I got. Now I plan to add a border and bring some leaves into it along with quilting branches and leaves in it. It will be the first quilt I add a border too. Perhaps I will decide not to after cutting it out and placing it on my design wall. I also need to fussy cut the ferns I decided to add to the bottom and mix them into the grass area. I hope you are enjoying the progress made on this piece.