Hello!

I spent part of January and the early part of February tending to family members who were sick or being sick myself. I’ve still got a touch of a cold but we are mostly all better. During that down time I had time to work on my Improv Studies. The leaves and door studies are now practice pieces for larger quilts, probably wall hanging size.

Let’s start with the leaves. I completed one leaf study out of five. The other four are in different stages of completion. I have one at the hand quilting stage and three others that need their embroidery finished up. The blue leaf pictured below has been embroidered and hand quilted with big stitch hand quilting. I’m still working on my hand quilting technique, spacing, and getting a rhythm or groove down.

There are several things I would have done differently but that’s why it’s a study or exploration of an idea.

I finished one of the two door studies I was working on. I embroidered different details on them and had very different results but they were still recognizable as doors or portals. The piece I finished, pictured below, was not quilted. There wasn’t a lot of background fabric so I simply sewed it right sides together with a backing fabric, left a hole, and turned it right side out through the hole. I finished it by doing a ladder stitch to close up the turning hole. Turns out this isn’t my favorite method of finishing but it worked for this application.

I took my finished and unfinished studies to an artist’s group that I’m a part of to show what I had been working on and what I might want to display in an upcoming group gallery show. I was happy with the feedback I received and am looking forward to making new work in this same vein.

I also did some traditional quilting and made a capybara pillow top. The pattern comes from Elizabeth Hartman’s Rainbow Rainforest pattern.

The other project I finished up was this Aloha banner to hang on the wall next to our pictures from our trip to Hawaii last year. The pattern is by Happy Sew Lucky and is foundation paper pieced. This project reminded me how much I like foundation paper piecing. I did hand quilt around the letters with perle cotton and then assembled the banner based on the instructions given.

Happy Creating!

Camille