Patchwork in Progress

I love to read comments on my blog, and am especially grateful when my blog friends help me by alerting me to bad links or offering suggestions. Many thanks to Del and Cathie who recently let me know about some links to nowhere. I will be more careful when copying and pasting URL's into the link box, because by default there is already an "html://" in the hyperlink box. The bad links were because of double "html://" code in the links.

And also a big thank you to Hilal of New Moon Studio Ceramics for inspiring me to higher levels of photography. Her blog and Etsy shop indeed have very lovely photographs, in fact, I would say, magazine or gallery catalogue level. And what beautiful and unusual pieces of art she creates!

My husband has a very good quality Sony camera with what longarm teacher Nichole Webb once dubbed "a big honking lens" when I used it at one of her classes. I will re-photograph my Etsy pictures with it at higher resolution and try to improve their quality.

Yesterday, I happily spent an afternoon doing something that has been increasingly rare for me- piecing quilt blocks! For the past year, I can't think of any traditional quilt tops I have made. With my increased interest in art quilts, my long-arm quilting, and a sewing room in transition, I just have not been making much patchwork.

However, I am excited about making the nursery bedding for my niece. I have the dust ruffle completely finished, and started cutting and piecing some simple preliminary blocks. This is the quilt from the ensemble that she liked.

This is from the Julia Bedding Crib set by Kidsline. At first I was trying to duplicate the quilt, but there are a couple of obvious problems with that. Numero uno, all these blocks and the whole set feature heavy embroidery. Another is that some of the fabrics look like shiny polyester.

I don't have an embroidery machine, don't feel like doing all that hand embroidery or even applique on a quilt for a baby, and don't like polyester for babies. I also don't like fat batts, and like lots more quilting. So, after being reassured from my niece and my sister that I should do whatever I like, I started trying out other ways to create a quilt that would coordinate with the color scheme if she chooses some of the other accessories from this set.

Here's another problem for me: everything is the same pale value except for the dark browns. I am strongly inclined to throw in a few zingers to brighten it up, but I have not got the desired effect yet.

I will keep experimenting today. Melinda wants more lavender than pink, and has sage green walls and the dark brown crib. I think I will save the blocks with the strong fuchsia and purple for another project.

Notice the dappled sunlight at play in that photo? The sun is out today! Yippee! It has been a dreary gray week until now.