Bonnie's books

I have been enjoying Bonnie Hunter's first 2 books this week. Our guild librarian ordered them for us, and I got first dibs on borrowing them, since I requested them!  There are some great ideas for "green" quilting in the "Scraps & Shirttails" book, but my favorite is the "Leaders & Enders" book, which is full of ideas for organizing scraps and stash, and turning it all into finished quilts.

It is very cool to be reading Bonnie's books for the first time, while I have been machine quilting the first mystery quilt I made from Bonnie's patterns!  I have been really busy at work, so I haven't had much time for fun quilting, but I try to fit in a little bit of quiltyness every day, even if it's late at night. The past 2 weeks have been mostly reading at night and a bit of work on this quilt.

Here is a photo of stitching in the ditch quilting on my "Carolina Crossroads", which I call "Colour Crossroads". It was the first really scrappy quilt I made completely from my stash, and I enjoyed every minute of sewing it in 2008! It was also the first large quilt that I sewed on-pointe, and I was quite worried about all those bias edges, but it came together amazingly well!

It didn't get finished because (surprise, surprise!) I started a few more quilts after that! But I always really liked it and wanted it to be a finished quilt. I put it on my UFO wish list in January, started quilting it at retreat, and have been chiseling away at that quilting ever since.

I did a free motion swirl design in lime green thread on the wide border and circled through as many of the bright green circles as I could find...it has been fun, although challenging with shoving such a large quilt through my machine.

Check back later in the week to see a) the finished quilt and b) my new leader/ender project.