As I've been glancing at several other people's WIP Wednesday blog postings I've learned that I am far from the only person who has been down with some winter bug or other. That's just such a bummer all around, so I am sorry for all of you out there feeling crummy this season - hope you get your health and spark back soon!!

That said, this posting is going to be pretty light on accomplishments. I work my tail off last Thursday before our monthly Portland Modern Quilt Guild meeting, trying to finish piecing the do.Good Stitches Bliss top in time for show and tell. On Thursday I was only this far:

This was still in about 7 or 8 different sections on my design wall - not terribly portable;-)

Then, yesterday after spending Friday-Sunday not leaving my home, and Monday taking it somewhat easy, I got back to the studio and got the rest of this put together. Still have to trim the left side and bottom before basting and quilting, but glad to have gotten this thing together. It's a bit busier than I had anticipated, but hopefully won't be too much for whomever ends up receiving it in the end!

And just out of curiosity, who else is participating in this round of the For the Love of Solids swap? I wrote a short post about my progress a couple of nights ago, found here. So far I've gotten a couple of sketches done, and was able to gather some fabrics yesterday and today to play with.

Is it looking bright and rainbowy yet??

Unfortunately, that's about all I have! I did bring with me to work today the oval template for the Encapsulated quilt and some freezer paper to trace onto, so hopefully I'll be a couple of steps closer to a finish for next week! Oh, and I made a commitment and counted the actual number of finished quilt tops I have just waiting to be quilted (including a couple of minis): 15!

tally:
new - 1
completed - 0
in progress - 8
unquilted tops - 15

OH! And I took it upon myself during my down time on the couch to sort through my baskets and bags of yarn and knitting/crochet projects... we might start seeing a few of these popping up from time to time, too!

Now, scoot on over to Freshly Pieced to check out what the others are reporting this WIP Wednesday!

So, the saga of the blue place mats continues, though it's coming together with positive results. As you all may recall, once I finally came up with a solution for the piecework, after quite a journey, the next step was to figure out how I would quilt these guys. I drew a few sketches in my notebook, and decided to try slightly wonky, echoed circles mimicking the print on the border, but at a much larger scale.

Not only did I have trouble doing freehand circles at that scale (especially working at my machine on my dining table, so I only had the throat of the machine as a working surface), but I felt that the motif felt a little too juvenile for the design of the place mats at this stage. Back to the drawing board (quite literally). I still liked the idea of circles, and decided to try my hand at pebble quilting. And how effective it is!!

However, it is also extremely intense on both one's concentration and the muscles from the neck, shoulders and down to the fingers. I find I need to take a break just about every 15 minutes or so, otherwise I start getting sloppy, and it shows! This also requires a LOT of thread! I love how the variegated thread looks with these place mats - I went with Sulky Blendables and am very happy with the outcome. However, these come in 500m spools, and I am about to start on my 3rd spool after quilting just 5 of the 8 mats. Each one is using up about 3 bobbins! I've quilted whole crib quilts with under 2 bobbins' worth of thread!! But darn it, it's going to be worth it when they're done, right??