Some Progress

We've had several showery cool days and today is promising more of the same, so painting of the big front deck is put on hold until the weather dries up.  I was more than ready for a break, though we're looking forward to having this last big project completed, and the house sold.  We've had an encouraging number of showings in the past couple of weeks and some serious interest, so fingers-crossed that we'll soon be on to the next stage of this big life change.

I've been able to spend a few hours working on the free motion practice quilt mentioned in an earlier post a month or two back.  The nine central blocks are now completed, along with the inner border and sashings.  A few of the most recently completed blocks:

The 10 inch wide outer border is being devoted to freeform feather practice - my favorite kind of FMQ!  Up to this point I had used white thread to quilt the entire top, but the teeny tiny calico print of this outer border made this totally impractical - impossible to see my stitches to backtrack or even see where to head next.  So, after having to mark the outer borders of the first already completed feather with blue washout marker to avoid quilting over it, I pulled several colors of wildly contrasting colors, even a spool of variegated thread, and plan to finish by alternating colors of the feathers.  For the most part, I think this will work out ok since there are several other shades of pinks, greens and even light yellows in some of the other calicoes used in the top.  A section of the completed area, with the variegated thread.  I think the variegated will be used sparingly on the rest of the borders as the color changes are often occurring at the point where backtracking is needed, and looks a bit muddy.

Happily, my Janome is performing beautifully and the tension is staying even for the most part.  There are only a very few tiny dots of thread where the darker top thread shows through to the back on the feathers.  I'm really loving the backing fabric on this quilt.

So, that's our latest progress!  Wishing you a happy, sunny, quilt-filled week, and looking forward to seeing what you've been up to lately.