I went to a small quilt retreat this past weekend put on by a local friend, Mariella. She does a retreat in the fall and spring each year, and I usually try to go to the fall one but haven't been able to go for the last several years. This year I made it a point to go so I could catch up with old friends and I needed a break. Mariella creates a new quilt pattern for each of her retreats, and it is so cool to see what people do with them. This is a picture of mine. All the blocks and sashing strips are done, and the rows are all done, just need to sew the rows together. By the time this is finished with borders, it will be queen-sized. I put it up on my design wall yesterday afternoon when I got home just to make sure I had things turned the correct way and I noticed I have one sashing strip that needs to have a set turned. Glad I saw it now instead of after I had the borders on.
There were a bazillion squares and half square triangles and star points in this quilt (or at least it felt like it). This is the first quilt I have completely cut with my Accuquilt Go! cutter, and I must say I don't think I will ever cut fabrics again for a quilt using anything but my Go! cutter.
Things have gotten crazy nuts at work again, so I've been able to spend very little time sewing or creating. One of the little things I've been able to do is one small appliqué project. The heart was cut on the Accuquilt Go! cutter using the heart die. The Go! certainly speeds things up for applique, and if you have an embroidery machine, you can be done in no time. For the heart I used a pre-digitized design from the Shapes embroidery collection from Accuquilt. I did add lettering from the built-in letters on the Bernina 830 before I stitched the design out. Fabric was pre-fused with appliqué stabilizer before cutting. It took a total of about 5 minutes from beginning to the final embroidery stitch. The notebook cover took about an hour to complete.
I've also been playing some with digitizing some of the shapes myself in the Designer Plus Version 6 software. This is my final test stitch out for the Arabesque die. I plan to make a table runner using this design, but that will have to wait until there is more time.
