Next step?

This is what is up on my design wall at the moment. I don't really have a plan for the next step. All the little circles are fused on but the big circle is just pinned at the moment. I thought of doing some kind of freehand feathery quilting in hot pink thread, or quilting more rows of circles, or maybe both. Any suggestions?

another 3 or 4 months flown by!

It's been a long time since my last post here. Summer is not a good time for me. One of the symptoms of multiple sclerosis is heat intolerance, and I feel it more and more each summer. For me, extreme fatigue is the biggest problem. While I won't go into what MS-related fatigue is like (you can google it if you're interested), I will say that it is NOTHING like feeling tired after having a few late nights, which apparently is what some people think.

It wasn't all bad this summer though. I managed to get some quilty stuff done - yay! I need to get some photos off the camera's memory card and onto the computer soon so I can share them. There are a few obligatory photos of Miss Millie the cat but you probably don't want to see them. Some glorious sunsets too, and probably a couple that are quilt-related thrown in for good measure.

The photo above was taken on a gorgeous summer day when I washed the quilt that is usually on my bed. It is a simple 'turning twenty' quilt and it's the first one I ever did freehand feathers on when I got my longarm quilting machine. I want to make another one that is in brighter colours but I need to make it so big that I've been putting it off. Maybe I'll gather up all my hand-dyed fabrics and make one like the wonderful quilts that Melody Johnson makes. I love her work!!

Flower practice quilt

I made this little quilt as a practice for a larger quilt I want to make. I tried out a few new things on this quilt - I did all the applique and quilting on my longarm quilting machine. The tiny little circles around the flowers and the mock buttonhole kind of stitch on the leaves took f-o-r-e-v-e-r to do but I'm quite pleased with the way they came out.

 I wanted to try McTavishing on this one, and also try to scale down a meandering feather as a background filler. I decided to put the diamond shape in just as a bit of added interest.

 So this is the finished quilt. Don't know why I haven't taken a photo of it with the binding finished yet. What do you think?