one project is going well

this project at least is going well so far

the 2 birds and the 3 butterflies that I selected to applique right on to the petals went on without any problems

today I'll be fusing the small butterflies together so they can be attached in strategic places

last night as I was appliqueing the last bird down it occurred to me that it would be fun to make the back of the quilt look like the back of a post card -- this thought brought on by the fact that I'll need to make the "sandwich" soon, so I need to solve the back issue and by the piece of fabric that came in the packet that looks like writing all over it

we'll see how that goes

meantime, the palm tree frond stitching has been entirely removed - fortunately without any further damage to the fabric

this morning I decided that it might be better to use fabric and perhaps fuse it over the "problem area"


'tis the season to tear out and start over evidently

this is the piece I started out with that yesterday's picture of the blue "chain" is for

I had taken the edges off to redo them in an attempt to get the piece to lay flat (it had a little "ripple" look to it that I found objectionable)

uh, apparently the edges were not the issue -- the bead embroidery was

so yesterday, after I had tried the new edge thing, I took the edge off again -- and all of the bead embroidery right up to the "bezel" of beads that holds the stone -- then I trimmed it down to just the stone with that bezel and I'm doing the edging there

the finished piece will be smaller, but I think it will a lot better

it's time to start turning this box of yarn into the Christmas projects it is destined to become

last night I did the swatching for the first project -- and discovered that while a size 5 needle was too small for gauge, a size 6 needle was too large -- so I'll be knitting this project with one of each -- which makes gauge perfectly

weird -- but it works so I'm going with it

over the weekend (the day after I had mailed off my Hoffman quilt for the competition) there was an article in our local newspaper about an award winning quilt that was lost somewhere between the offices of a magazine and the artist that created it (you can read the article here) -- which of course made me feel a brief moment of panic -- this morning I used the tracking software on the post office's website and got the "package delivered" message -- which made me feel better, but I'll still be watching for that post card to return to me from them that tells me it arrived (ok, it's the proverbial wearing of belt and suspenders!)