The Neighborhood is Coming Together

We have been having quite a bit of stormy weather here in our real life neighborhood which has given me lots of sewing time.  Oh, I could and probably should be doing other things like cleaning house and baking cookies, but I got a little wrapped up with this sewing project and couldn’t tear myself away.  I am so close to being done with the piecing on this, just 2 more seams actually.  It has all just fit together so nicely and I am thrilled with that.  When you have a border with so many seams it is easy for things to stretch and get wonky sometimes, but I have measured and re-measured and pinned and handled the whole thing with kid gloves and it is all paying off.  I just have the long sides to put on now.

   The corners in the pattern were just a plain beige square that they quilted a sun on.  That looked nice enough, but I always wanted to make a change of my own and after chatting with the guy of the house who always has wonderful suggestions for my quilts we decided that there needed to be an apple tree in this quilt since we have an orchard and all.  He actually started searching the internet for apple tree quilt blocks and we found that fit perfectly in the corner.  The only thing is that it is a little larger than the other trees, but I have decided to keep it because it has some of the other design elements that are on the inside of the quilt and now carried through to the corners.  I am really liking this quilt top.  Now for the quilting.  I have mentioned in the last post that I have a few quilt tops waiting for me to get to the quilting on and this is because I get stumped her as to what to quilt.  Quilts I have quilted in the past have stumped me initially too, but when I just start quilting it usually all just comes to me.  I have tried marking a quilt, but rarely do I stick to the marked design and before I know I am off and doing something else altogether and with now marked lines to follow I find that it frees me to be creative.  The hardest part of the quilting for me is to just start!  I have never quilted a quilt quite this big and that part frightens me a little, but when I look at the quilt I can see that I will just break it up into sections and think of each section as a small quilt on its own.

Well, it is another stormy day so I will get those last sides on and still have time to clean and bake if all goes according to the plan I have worked up over my morning coffee!

Enjoying these stormy days!

Ferne