On the other hand...

I did manage to get quite a lot done today, which always makes things better. The most important thing on my agenda was getting the class quilt quilted, and as you can see I did it! I thought about doing a nice safe pantograph, but well. It was just such a good canvas to play with. I wanted to keep the feeling of movement, so there are lots of spirals and flame patterns. I had a lot of fun with it. The borders I am not thrilled with. I used a stencil to mark the design of feathers and stars. It looks like a very cool stencil but I had some problems. Firstly I couldn't see a way to do it as a continuous line, by the last one I had worked out a way to do it in only two lines. I also found it very difficult to follow the feather design. I thought free hand feathers were tricky, but this was much harder. On the bright side I have learned something. I don't like pre-marking feathers. I can see that saving me a lot of time and stress in the future. There is no way I would choose to make a design that I had to mark to make it work. So I suspect any wholecloth designs I come up with will be largely feather free.

I am thinking of offering a discount on quilting services to my students, or at least those doing classes where the end product is suitable for longarm quilting. Do you think this would be a good idea? Would it be something you would appreciate if you were taking a class?

The other thing I have been working on is the road warriors house warming present. He asked if I could do a Che Guevara wall hanging for him. You may have seen my earlier post with the pattern for it. Today I finally got round to prewashing some black fabric for it. I don't know why but it always seems like a lot of hassle when I have to wash the fabric. Really, even though I do it by hand, it doesn't take much time or effort. Still after an hour of cutting out this is where I have got to. I am so thrilled with it. While I was cutting it I was getting very nervous. The hair looked far too rounded and the face too craggy, but suddenly when you can step back and really see it, it all comes together. Hopefully I can get the rest of it done tomorrow, and maybe hand sew the binding while I have some friends round. Keep your fingers crossed for me (unless you are trying to quilt/craft of course). Funny, for a design that wasn't really my bag when I started, I've got really quite attached to it.