Some Blocks

I haven't posted in awhile for a bunch of various reasons, but I am back today with a few blocks I have finished in the meantime.

 

I joined the Virtual Quilting Bee over at Diary of a Quilter.  My sister, who lives clear across the country from me, wants to learn to quilt, and when I saw this I thought it would be a great way for her to learn.  Amy has a lot of great beginning quilting posts and tutorials on her blog that I can direct my sister to, and with me doing to QAL with her (AND the awesomeness of Facetime!), I can answer any other more specific questions she might have.  Plus, the fact that she is coming out for an extended visit this summer doesn't hurt.  We should be about half way through our blocks by then, and we can work on them for a bit together.

 

Anyway, here is the first block, which was posted last Friday.

 

The next two are the applique BOM I am doing from my LQS.  It is a pattern by Edyta Sitar of Laundry Basket Quilts.

 

I wanted to try my hand at applique to see if I liked doing it.  And so far, I do!  It is definitely time consuming - each block has been taking me about 4-5 days to finish - but it is fairly easy.

 

The top one is the January block, and the one below is the February block.  I am doing a machine buttonhole stitch for my applique, and while I definitely did a far better job on the February block than the January block, I still have MUCH room for improvement.  All those curves and sharp points are killers!

 

However, by the time I am done with this quilt, I will probably be an appliqueing expert! (One can hope, anyway...)