ALQS2 - woo hoo!

Well, despite the fact that I've spent a lot of the day cooking (it's DH's 50th today and we are having friends round for dinner) and tidying up the house (tip: try to avoid giving a dinner party in the midst of redecorating your hallway!) I did manage to find some time for a few other things, including a few hours of quilting the mini quilt for the ALQS2. I was going to say, sewing, but actually, there's no sewing involved - the pieces are all cut out freehand, then fused down to hold in place while the quilting was done, then essentially held down by the quilting. As this is an "art quilt" and not intended to be washed, etc, it doesn't matter that the shapes aren't sewn in to the background - and of course, it's a heck of a lot faster to put together.

I was inspired by this quilt that Joyce was working on - I loved the way the circles were quite smooshed in some cases and just kind of stuck on top of one another - so I decided to use this kind of idea, though I put rectangles in as well. And then I cut it with a wavy border, just for fun. The whole piece is quite small - not sure what size, but smaller than a fat quarter, as that's the approximate size of the green piece that I started with. I borrowed the wavy border idea from the quilt I made for Ursula, and also borrowed the idea of using a number of different thread colours and just changing them as I pleased in the piece - I even snuck a little metallic thread in there (purple), though it may not show in the photo - not a lot, as I find that doing FMQ with metallic thread is a little hard - after the third breakage, I stopped.

I decided to go with an all-over type pattern, rather than to try to echo the shapes - I did debate it for a while, but in the end, none of those ideas were really speaking to me and I'm kind of into waves and flames at the moment, so went with texture over shapes. I think it works ok - from a distance, the colours are strong enough that the shapes hold their own without emphasis from the quilting.



Anyway, I'm pleased with the piece and I hope the new owner will be as well, when she gets it - I do still have to bind it, but that's a job for another day - perhaps I will get the binding attached tomorrow and then it can be sewn down over the next week. I also need to quilt two other mini quilts - one for a private swap I am doing with Andrea in celebration of our mutual 40th birthdays, and the other, my mini quilt for the Holiday Booty Swap which I showed the other day (purple and blue with white background). But I'm basically on track, which is good, as I really had a stressful time in early October with too many projects looming and not enough time. Tomorrow's priorities will be to do a journal quilt and then work on the border for the Spring Fling Round Robin, which I need to mail out by next weekend. Deep Breath!