Red Delicious Quilt

It’s been a few months (really?) since I updated here.  Time has flown, as it always does, with day-to-day events filling the hours.  I have managed to complete the applique for my version of the the Red Delicious BOM designed by Esther Aliu from Australia.  When I started the project in November 2008, I was looking for an applique project to energize me to become more active in quilting and applique in particular.  I truly enjoyed making this.  I made some changes to her design here and there.  I began to lag behind in the monthly blocks and finally realized that I didn’t want another UFO, so this fall I pushed forward to finish the big center cherry basket block.  Once that was done, I changed her swirls to lattice, and substituted roses in the upper left.  Yea, the hard part is done, just borders and quilting left.  Here’s a peek of the top hanging in the dining room which will become it’s home once I finish it. 

I’m starting my 2010 project.  It’s a portrait of Sarah and Emma.  I used Photoshop to posterize the snapshot and find the edges of the various shapes and colors.  Kinko’s was able to enlarge it to 300%.  What you see is a velium line drawing of the underlying print.  It’s taken a couple of days off and on to get it to this stage.  The lips were the most difficult to interpret, and I may have to make adjustments when it comes to stitching those areas.  I would like to have this finished by the end of summer — only time will tell. 

In January (wait — it’s still January!) I went to the Road to California Show in Ontario with my BFF Loretta.  I was very happy to see Cherrywood fabrics there.  Cherrywood does gradations of hand-dyes including skin tones.  I helped with their bottom line and bought one of everything I thought might work on this project.