Forgot to add this little warm up area

in the excess fabric at the bottom of the quilt. I crossed the two colours to see how each thread appeared on each colour.

and nearly two more strips

Nearly finished the main feathers on the next two strips, you'l have to click on it to see the quilting.
Whilst I'm stitching, I'm mulling over what to do in the shapes between the feathers. Please don't make any suggestions as I'd like it to come from my own head.

Got a bit done yesterday

on the strippy quilt. It's draped over the back of the sofa so just the one line of feather that I've done is on the top. Ignore that the stitching looks like a light thread , the camera is picking up the gloss of this thread which in reality is a deep rich teal.With the coloured wholecloth, I'm unpicking a little each evening, I'm getting there but it's slow progress.

Bits and bobs

I promised Quilt Direct a sample of machine quilting with YLI silk thread as they are such a lovely company to deal with. So I did this little piece yesterday and of course I didn't warm up first so it's quite dire. The stitching is far too big for this thread on the feather (and perhaps the wrong thread anyway for something so dominant) and in the background quilting I managed to get a pleat. Haven't done that for years so another little piece shall have to be done.
Sorry about the quality of this photo, I took it with my phone and forgot to put the anti shake on. I did want to show you how difficult the simplest of quilts was to pin. The fabric is my favourite Heide Stoll Weber hand dyed cotton sateen. This fabric just glows but my goodness it does have a lot of stretch. Keeping those seams straight when pinning was a major achievement.

Another shot to show you how well that backing fabric goes with the front. Notice how I haven't closed the pins, it's so much easier to close them later when sitting on the sofa watching TV.

And this is 3 evenings work cutting away the trapunto on the hand coloured quilt. I think I put in my entry form for Birmingham that it had no trapunto and realised that half way through stitching with the water soluble thread. Thank heavens this show gives you an opportunity to correct your entry information.