Awesome.

My mom came over today while I was sweating my boy parts off while marking this quilt. I only sweat because my eyes are so bad that I’m using a floor lamp with 5 100 watt bulbs under my plexi to make a light box. I stand right in front of it and it makes me sweat! My boy parts are still there, but still.

Anyway, she came over to talk to me about about my article in Quilter’s Home (July/August) and I was bitching about how hard this black wholecloth has been. Seriously, it’s a major pain. She decided to take over and marked half my border for me! She’s a little slower than I am, but I didn’t care because it gave me time to stick my head in the freezer and cool off.  She also brought me a roast beef sandwich!

Getting there.

This top has been such a pain to mark. I think it’s going to be spectacular though. The motifs will be done in black highlights thread and all the background quilting is Scarlet so fine. The back will be red I *think* I’m still not 100% on that because I don’t want my motifs in black to look sketchy on the back.

I have 2 more corners to mark and then I have to design the border. It’ll dip down to fill that open space under the marked line. I think it’s going to be awesome, I’m really excited about getting started on it.

After a solid week of trying to come up with a design i like for my wholecloth, this is what i ended up with…which is exactly what i started with. SIGH

hmm, i’m sort of into this. I wish i could figure out how to separate them some more.

and now super sized (yeah the red looks atrocious, i know)

This is something I wish I had done when i did my gray wholecloth

practice! This design is all over the place and I’m happy to report I can do the whole thing (at least as much as i can before i advance) without tying off.

soooo hot. I’m soooooo in love with this. Now imagine it all in black with red background quilting. yes!

I am a mad man.

Seriously, did I ever tell you how I’m partially blind? Well, I am. So you might wonder why on earth I’m marking a really big black wholecloth. I’m a masochist, thats why! I have just the border motifs to design, it’s really coming along.

thats my corner motif which has taken me about 45 minutes to mark half of it.

it shows up a lot better in photos. I wish it showed up this well!

you can make out a little of the center motif in this pic. Phew.

Now it’s all black, i’ll quilt the motifs in black and my background quilting is in red. I’m not sure if I’m going to use a red or a black back. I have both. I wanted to do red, but I don’t want the black bobbin thread to look crappy on the back. They’ll be a lot of background quilting though (in red and white) I’m not sure what to do.

And here’s the gradation I was working on last night turquoise-chocolate.

Some of it is still wet, thats why they have that line in them

and this is a baby:

more stuff

Is it getting too ridiculous? I did these orange peels at 1.5 inches and then feathered the little melon shaped areas. I like the pebbles and the feathers but i feel like i need to choose between the two. hmm

and here’s a feather since i got some black highlights thread (not impressed)

something new x2

Sort of new. I’m marking my wholecloth and needed to take a break because it really hurts my back and this beast is big (80×80) and black, so it’s taking a lot longer than it would if it were white or light

anyway, super Gayle sent me some wool batting to try and i had to play with it. I’m trying to come up with a really interesting background fill and i think i found it.

I like the 2nd one better i think, but i worry about it being too big and honestly I don’t think i could get it much smaller. The first one is cool too

I think I like the 2nd one because of the pebbles, because come on, I need a few million pebbles in every quilt i do, right?

right.

Gayle challenged me to try something new, so I did, three times

Tiny feathers. Tiny tiny. Maybe I can get them smaller, but probably not.

then a little tetris filler and pebbled with little triangles inside them. I’m into the tetris thing. Not so sure on the pebbles.

I guess four things.

then I tried straight lines without a ruler because i can’t afford the extended base for my machine to use rulers. yay.