Family tree and love

Since my mother's birthday is in September, I have been working hard on my Family Tree quilt, and have finished the top!

I'm really pleased with it. The colour gradation wasn't intentional, just resulted from dyeing several lots of blue fabric in the microwave, but I'm quite happy with it. The letters were free pieced, then cut wedge-shaped and the whole section was added to the top of the quilt. Thanks go to a technique I learned at a Pat Deacon workshop for sewing curved pieces, and Dawn Cameron-Dick for IMA. And of course, many thanks to Christine Thresh for inspiring me with her gorgeous paper pieced people in the first place!

And now to the love. I was immensely flattered to receive this picture of a LOVE quilt made by another Linda from Ontario, Canada. She had seen my LOVE quilt on Tonya's blog and decided to make one of her own! Her colours are less sugary and more sophisticated than mine, and the hand quilting with baptist fans is awesome! Thanks for sharing, Linda.

Curved flying geese

Today I was lucky enough to have attended a workshop with Pat Deacon, who showed us how to make curved flying geese. Pat is a superb quilter - especially famous for her prize-winning quilts featuring curved geometric shapes in primary colours - but, even better in my book, an ex-secondary school teacher, who is used to teaching, and does so clearly and concisely.

We were given a refresher on foundation piecing the no-fail way (it really was!) and then encouraged to draw our own curved flying geese patterns, before sewing them onto freezer paper. It never ceases to amaze me how wonderful other people's colours are! The participants used every colour combination imaginable, including black and white (stunning) and pink and orange (wow!). I went for my old favourites the analogous colours, this time blue, yellow and green.

Here is my piece ready for the final seam to be sewn. Pat advocates the use of 'invisible' tape instead of pins. I have to agree, pins do distort the seams slightly, so I've been giving this a go. It's good for hand-sewing, and I'll let you know how I get on with the machine.