the better to see them with

here is the progress on the big block for the Hoffman Challenge

you have to use your imagination here

that big open spot is the body of the fish

I have all of the fins and tail complete

now its on to the many rows of scales -- each and every one carefully cut to center a flower from the challenge fabric, then appliqued down

oh yeah, and I'm thinking about doing the gold thread couching around each and every one of those little scales

just call me crazy
step one of the Wild About Flowers piece

I laid out the blue fabric and started ripping and cutting the other fabrics to create what will the background of this piece

all of these have raw edges -- in fact, I tore the wood grain fabric and raveled out the edges to get that whole weathered fence look



after I was happy with the way that looked, I put the layer of dark blue tulle over the top of it and did the pinning with quilting safety pins

the tulle mutes the colors and has a handy way of holding all of the pieces in place (with the pinning of course)

the next step will be to stitch around each piece of grass and of the fence to secure them to the backing

unlike with the fish, however, there is no batting or backing on this yet -- I won't be adding that until I do all of the flowers on top of this background

so far, I really like the look of this
other projects got worked on yesterday too

here is the third strip of the afghan I'm working on

nice color pooling and I really like the open lacy pattern of it too


I have only a little of the quilting left to do on the turtle quilt too -- whoo hooo!!


today it's off to do our monthly Costco run, then hopefully back to some projects