A Finish and an Experiment

I finished this wall hanging last month. Tonight I took it off the wall and went outside to get pictures. Not great but good enough. The applique in the center of this quilt was done by hand by the back basted needle turn applique method. You can find a tutorial here. This is my first hand applique project and I'm not sure if I'm going to be much of a hand applique quilter. I am going to try another project or two in order to get more proficient and see if I learn to like it more. A good tip from our instructor is that when your curves are pointy to take smaller stitches. That helps more than I would have thought. This was a Jo Morton's Little Women Club project and our instructor is Jan Vaine who just had an amazing book released! I've seen the book several times while it was in production and it's a must own if you love applique.

Lessons Learned From This Project:

1. Break hand applique projects into smaller time blocks to avoid hand pain.

2. Don't leave things until the last minute (see Lesson Learned #2).

3. When you just want to get it done, it's time to stop!

On Friday, I received this little goodie in the mail from a blogging friend, Karen from Karen's Handiwork. Last year she set a goal of stitching and finishing 3 ornaments a month. I watched in amazement as month after month she posted pictures of her finished ornies. She didn't give up and she met her goal! This year, she changed it up a bit and is stitching one ornament a month for herself and for one of her followers. I was the lucky follower in February.

Isn't this just gorgeous?!

The back is cute too! I've been studying the beaded edge. I want to do this one day. Just beautiful! Karen, thank you. I'll treasure it!

Sunday I was glancing through the Pioneer Woman blog when I came across this series on aperture. I decided to pull out my camera and take my fiddling around with it a bit much further. Her blog posts made it sound simple enough so I decided to give it a try. The ornament photos above are a couple of the resulting pictures and are completely unedited. I like how the hanger is a little fuzzy in the background and how the foreground is really sharp. I've always had difficulty photographing red and the top one is pretty true colored. The background is dingy though. I'll continue to work on it and hopefully learn more. I'm thinking of getting a DSLR camera and I really need to step up my game. If any of you have found any online resources helpful but that are also in simple language, I'd love to know about them!

Oh, and if you don't know who the Pioneer Woman is, you really must check out her blog. Her food is amazing and her story of how she met and married Marlboro Man is wonderful.

I hope each of you had a good start to the week and will have a few moments to spend doing the things that you love. Thank you for your visits and your comments. I appreciate you and continue to be inspired by you!