Fluffing around and finishes!

Weekend!!! DH at work, two of the boys had had a tummy bug so we cancelled Saturday morning swimming classes and instead of leaving the house early in a mad rush we took it just easy :-) DH had cleaned our house on Friday, so the only thing that really needs doing is the washing, and thanks to our very autumny windy day yesterday I have all baskets full to fold and put away.

Originally I had gotten up all excited on Saturday morning because on Friday my order for batting and a few other bobs was dispatched by Stitchworks (you girls were awesome, straight away picking up on the mistake I had mad in my order!!!) but sadly it didn't arrive on Saturday morning (well, we are on rural delivery after all...). I expect it will be here on Monday now, well definitely in time for next weekend.

I kept on fluffing around, but finally, in the late afternoon, I pulled out my 16 1/2" sample of tessellation. I decided that this would be a good practice piece for some more feathers. I divided the piece in half diagonally so I would get a similar shape to what I have on my QD9s; one half I stippled very small as I had left very little space to the centre line, the other half I went slightly larger:

Batting is a leftover man-made product, quilts similar to cotton

Detail of feather with very small stippling (more on that later). It took me some time to get the hang of plumes on the inside of a curve.

 

Detail of the feathers with stippling in a slightly larger scale

 I had some difficulty with stippling so small, I had to stitch fairly fast to get the stitches small enough that the shapes didn't look too jagged, but when I turned it over, all sorts of tension issues became apparent:

This half has the bigger stippling

This was the half with the smaller stippling, you can see where the tension was out...

16" is just the right size for the cushions on the sofa, though it is not quite the colours I had imagined for the lounge:

Another one of my recycled zips, this time from the packaging around a pillow inner :-)

 I can't remember if this was one of my 10 UFOs from the start of the year, but it's done now anyway!

For a few weeks I had been working on the binding and thread ends of the Dinosaur Quilt, and last night I finally finished it:

It is straighter than this picture shows :-) I don't think I will block it, but I might dry it flat when I have to wash it.

I like this guy and his brother below!

Some of the quilting from the back; I followed Leah Day's advice about using the same thread back and front. There are a few puckers but nothing 'fatal'.

DS under the blanket fast asleep with the thumb plucked in - I even turned on the big light to take this pic ;-) Note the dinos on the blinds?

That one was definitely on the UFO list :-) Glad it's finished, I enjoyed it, and I have learnt heaps. If you want to read more about this, just click on the Dinosaur Quilt label.

UFO / WIP count:

• Pastel Tesselation (started 2011)
• Optical Illusion / Chessboard placemat (started 2010 or 2011)
• Doodles (started 2010?)
• Flames Sq in Sq in Sq (attempted 2010?)
• Weaving Wallhanging (started 2010)
• DD9 which has morphed into QD9 (started Dec 2011)

Getting there...