Prep Work and Some Slow Quilting

I started the centerpiece for my Folksy Flower quilt. Just cut long rectangular chunks of black fabric and then used my rotary cutter to make the curved 'petal' end. All freehand of course. Why bother making an exact pattern or trying to be precise when I'm trying for a 'folksy' look?

Folksy Flower quilt

After getting it pinned into a rough looking circle, then I trimmed it up some with the scissors. There's more overlap in places than I'd like, but what I don't want is gaps at the top of the petals. I'm not much into basting my applique into place, pins generally work well for me, but this is a big piece. After some consideration, grumbling and metal warring going on, I went ahead and took the time to baste. And see? I pulled too tight on some of the stitches and now have some ruffling at the edges. grrr... People say that basting saves the individual pieces from shifting, but I have seem to have the reverse problem. Oh well. This way I should have a lot less trouble with pins dropping and worries about people randomly finding them in their foot. For some reason that makes people unhappy.

All basted and ready for the applique stitching....

I've also been slowly plugging along on my Scrap Basket and Rolling Stones quilt. I've reached the outer rows of blocks, but just when I started to think 'woohoo! There was sure a lot done', I counted. Yep. There's 18 blocks left to stitch. That's more blocks than there is in the center rows! Gotta just laugh and go with the flow.

Scrap Basket in the hoop....

One frame at a time and the stitching slowly adds up--it always does. I did go ahead and lightly mark the outside border thinking I'd squeeze that into the frame at the same time as the outer blocks. It's just a smidge too much quilt for one frame though, so I'll have to come back around and stitch the outside border all by itself.

Starting to stitch the outer blocks...

None of the stitching is very fancy in this quilt {is it ever with me?}, but I'm happy with the way it's adding some nice texture to my quilt. And btw, the only big stitch quilting is in the centerpiece. Now I'm stitching with a turquoise Gutterman hand quilting thread. Just keeping it sweet and simple.....

Time to link up with Kathy's Slow Sunday Stitching!