One of the great things about going to quilt retreat is the uninterrupted thinking time. Often, I get stalled on a project here and put it aside for months or even years. Sometimes when in the daily routine of home it is hard to keep a train of thought going for more than a few minutes at a time.
This year, with the theme "Mixing it Up" we were to mix applique and piecing in one project. I couldn't decide what I wanted to work on so I packed several unfinished projects, my suitcase of scraps, and my collection of solid fabrics.
I had six basket blocks that I made at retreat three years ago. I never knew what to do with them because I didn't think they would make a very large quilt. I decided to add the vines and make a strippy quilt. I only had scraps of bright fabrics so I pieced them together to make the vines and inner border.
The dots, or berries, just sort of happened. When some of the other ladies returned from a trip to town with that bright green and black dot fabric I knew that it needed something like that to finish it off. I made my own trip to town and bought some. It is a happy quilt that I never would have planned from the start but I really like how it turned out.
After finishing the basket top I moved to the next project. I had started the center applique piece in a workshop a few years ago but never got past cutting out the vase and a few flowers. I finished planning the applique design but still have a good bit of the sewing left to do. Once I had the center design set I started working on the borders. I'll be adding a double round of saw teeth with a white border in between. I plan to quilt a feathered vine in the plain border.
I am pretty happy with how this one is looking too.
I also made design decisions on a few other projects and now can get to work on them here. Sometimes the figuring out what to do next can be the hardest part of a project. It is good to get over that hurdle on a few things.
