I finished the binding on Las Ventanas this morning and went looking for a suitable place for a photo shoot. The colors of this one are brilliant, but hard to photograph well. The background color is really a mustardy sort of yellow, but can look chartreuse or other shades of green in certain light.
After trying several places indoors, I finally took it outside where you can really see how it glows in the sun. This quilt was started in a workshop with Jean Wells last fall. This is the one where I forgot I signed up and missed the first day. I just happened to run into Jean later that day and she asked why I hadn't been in class! Oh my, that was embarrassing! I did make it to the last two days of the workshop and was inspired by a book about the colors of Mexico. I ended making each block as I imagined a landscape would look through a window.
When it came time to do the back, I decided to piece it with another large ventana. Oh, wow, I love this back- almost better than the front. I am hesitant to even put a label on the back, but I will have to for the show.
I decided to try some straight line quilting with the walking foot. It is remarkably difficult to make really straight lines. I'm sure that is partly my own little quirk, but, actually, I like the variation in the lines and after a while I stopped worrying about making them perfectly distanced or straight. This is the first time I've used masking tape to mark quilting lines. That worked out great. I laid on several strips spaced about 6 inches apart, quilted down both sides of them (not right next to the tape, because I knew my lines wouldn't be straight), then took out all the basting pins and filled in the rest with quilted lines. Easy, but it does use quite a bit of thread. I used a Sulky blendable for the top thread and a plain heavyweight Aurafil thread for the bobbin.
Another one down! I have two quilts with machine quilters, three more quilts very close to done, one to be quilted (by me) and one more that I will take to a quilter if I can finish the top soon. So much to do and 75 days to go!