Memories of a Back Yard Pond

it is done

more than two months ahead of the deadline for it to be turned in

(amazing!)

the paperwork to submit it asks for a title, so what I had been talking about as the "Hoffman Challenge" quilt all these months here, has now been officially named "Memories of a Back Yard Pond"

I have already printed a picture for my "brag book" and one to send to my friend in California that doesn't do computers, and I will be taking it to the 3 quilt groups I participate in between now and June 10, then it will go off to the judges

so now I'm working more intensely on the "Wild About Flowers" quilt which has an August deadline

the stalks, leaves and buds of the holly hocks are done now -- the last four buds I did so they look like they are partially open and they are three dimensional -- something that I'm doing a lot of on this piece

last night I started stitching on the open flowers that are side views on the stalks, and as soon as I get all of those stitched on I'll be doing the 3 dimensional open flowers

once again this piece has surprised me as the technique I thought would work to do those opening buds actually DID work

I'm going to add some glass beads that look like water droplets to this at the end stage too
work continues on other projects too

after removing the sleeves from the plaid shirt, I stitched in the long sleeves from the white shirt, then I cut off the button and button hole bands from the plaid shirt and added a wider double thickness of white down the front

I'm working on edging everything with the print fabric now -- cut as narrow bias strips and applied sort of like a quilt binding

once the basic construction is complete I'll be moving on to doing the embellishments
these amazing items arrived in the mail yesterday from my friend in California

I had sent her stampings of my African animals which she made into a wall hanging (which you can see a picture of in this post)

so she returned the favor and sent me some stampings of some wood blocks she had picked up when she went to the quilt show at Sisters, OR, last summer

these are amazing!!

I think that some of them are going to get used as embellishment on that black and white shirt I'm doing

and she's done half of my prep work for a demonstration I'll be doing at our guild meeting in June on bead embellishment --- she's already stamped plenty of animals for me to use there!

WOW!

and for those of you keeping track of the knitting progress -- the Christmas sweater is 48.537% complete (heh, yeah, I did actually work on that too!)