Cacti BQ Quilt

Today was the last day of my 5 day Easter weekend holiday. Tomorrow, it is back to my day job. The weekend was filled with the usual weekend activities--laundry, grocery shopping, vacuuming, and dusting. Good Friday we enjoyed a special family meal in celebration of Easter. The extra long weekend also afforded time for quilting.

I finished off a super secret project that I can not share pictures of right now and I worked on a project for me.

While in Arizona in February 2009, I purchased two panels of cacti prints from the Santa Fe fabric line by RJR. I set the blocks together using the BQ pattern from Maple Island Quilts after seeing a quilt made by Kathleen Moorhead Johnson http://www.augustwindquiltdesigns.com/page13.html.




The dark Southwest print to the left of my quilt top is a fabric from the same line as the cacti blocks. Although I purchased this fabric with the intention of using it as a border, I am not sure I like it with this quilt top. I will have to think further on this. Also, I still have some more cacti blocks so I am thinking of adding another row of blocks before calling this one finished.

New Quilting Techniques

Yesterday I took a class taught by Maureen Wood - http://quiltworx.com/teacher/teacher.php?tchTeacher=maureenwood. The class was was on the Judy Niemeyer quilt, Desert Sky. These are the two blocks I finished in class.

Maureen chose this pattern because it would give us an opportunity to work on two techniques--paper piecing and curved piecing. I thoroughly enjoyed the class! I have dabbled in both techniques in the past but did not enjoy doing them so they remained on my list of things to avoid. Maureen promised us that we would enjoy the hints she had to share and we would leave the class changing our mind about the techniques. Maureen was right! Judy Niemeyer has simplified both techniques to the point that they are almost effortless when done her way.
Something else I have always wanted to do was reversible binding. After researching several sites on the Internet for this technique, I settled on the method described by Betty Cotton.http://www.americaquiltscreatively.com/episodes/AQc_202.pdf

These are photos of my little sample that I made to try out the technique. I will be sure to try this binding technique on a future project where the backing I have chosen dictates a different colour binding than the front of the quilt.

I enjoyed adding these new techniques to my quilting tool kit--paper piecing, curved piecing, and reversible binding. Not bad for a weekend.