Block4 changed for 30's fabric

I've replaced the triangles at the sides of block 4 with a feather to link with the central block. Each feather has 22 lobes and there are eight of them. This little bounty of prepared lobes has taken me the best part of today and I've still only prepared 8 for each feather. The triangles seem a much better option now but having started, I shall finish!
Yesterday was spent redrawing the block and copying the new feathers onto the fabric.
You can see the old vase which has been whitened out.

I have an awful feeling I shall want to add something or other to the vase... Why can I not leave well alone?

Middle block has it's final tweak

This hasn't made it better or worse than Esther's, just different.

I was loathe to put the dark circle in the middle. Whenever I see things appliquéd down over points meeting like this I often think people are hiding an error, but in this case it really unites the block. In retrospect if I'd seen the whole quilt before I had started, I would have done the hearts in the purple and the daisy like petals in the red.

Just for me to get an idea of how it shall look

I wanted to see if I was right about the red hearts and the green shapes in the centre block looking too heavy once I added that innver border and I think it was as I had feared. I'm going to try to overlay the red and the green with other fabrics with the same shapes but smaller so the red and green only show round the edge of each motif.....
Esther did warn us there would be a lot of applique but never did I imagine it would be this much (grin). I love her quilt but being the egoist that I am, I have to do more to make it mine. The vases and the inner border is a start, I think the next border will be all mine.....

More on the middle block

I decided to place something different round the centre clock. I drew a wavy line, cut some fabric 1¼" wide on the bias, pressed it in half and stitched it down. Can you see how the dreaded steam iron has spluttered over the fabric. A little annoying but it shall wash out...

I then designed a feather type lobe shape and prepared them with starch like Esther prepares hers.. By the way, Margaret Docherty uses a similar method and her applique is the best I have ever seen. (I found out this time when repeating the same shape over and over, 3 layers of freezer paper is even better than two).

This is how it looked before I stitched it down.

I think it needs more inside the spine, birds perhaps? And perhaps something to tone down the red hearts and the green shapes, something inside to make those a little less heavy.....?

Work in Progress Wednesday.

I have been playing with a different shape for the vase. I feel my 30s fabrics fight the Art Deco shape of the pattern. I quite like this one.

I did wonder for a very short time about adding handles to the vase, luckily this thought came and went with the breeze.

Those of  you who looked at my Pinterest page a couple of posts ago might have noticed I pinned this bird. I could not resist temptation and bought one for the conservatory whilst they had 20% off.



I like having birds round the house, this one got left behind after Christmas, I love it hanging from these twigs. (Why is it, there is always on Christmas decoration which doesn't make it back into the loft with the rest?

Work in Progress Wednesday.

As you can see, I haven't done much this week. Indeed although I worked through most of today all I managed was to prepare three of the flowers and stitch down two of them, this appliqué eats time.
I also did a little work on the International Challenge piece, this was not so sucessful, but a lesson learned.

Not a lot done since my last post

The fibromyalgia has been a killer recently and has interfered with my life and my quilting.

I have discovered Pinterest, it's like a visual Facebook and bookmark site combined. You download the Pin and then whenever you see something you like or love, you click on the pin on your toolbar to save it. You can set up different boards for different interests you might have and the glory of it is that you can click on any picture, click again and it will take you back to the site from where it came. Brilliant, no more bookmarks which you cannot remember why you bookmarked them!
See my boards here, for some reason the link software on blogger isn't working today so this is the link,
http://pinterest.com/featheronwire/ 
enjoy and have fun. I requested a page and was sent an email for setting mine up a couple of days later.