Progress, Third Project

I spent a fun evening in the sewing room last night arranging flowers. I knew this would change the character of the quilt, but did you think it would look *this* good???



No modesty here, eh?
You know, if I had known in advance how much of a PITA this quilt would be, I might have never attempted it... but looking at it now on the design wall, I am hella proud and glad that I stuck with it. Here's a close up of the appliqué:



I'll quilt this down during the final stages, and that will change its character yet again.

While we're on a quilting roll, I'll introduce you to the third of the 10 Projects I am choosing.





This sampler quilt was the result of the intermediate quilting course I took at The Quilter's Choice in Kingston... the quilting store nearest my heart and unfortunately too far away to visit regularly. It's destined to be a duvet cover, and the colours for our master bedroom were drawn from this quilt as an inspiration... which means I need to get off my butt and finish it. Fortunately, duvet season doesn't begin for a while yet.

The top is partially machine quilted; some stitch-in-the-ditch but I'd like to do something special in each of the 16 sampler blocks, a little free-motion goodness. Then it needs to find a back and some snaps to become a duvet cover. I'm really not far from completion on this, but when it's waiting patiently in line behind 30 other projects, well... let's just say, I'm glad I have y'all to keep me honest and focussed! :)

(Blogging idiocy note. When I import the photos from Photobucket, I get two photos and a blank box... I've been deleting a photo and the blank and just using a single photo- but I see now when I click on the blog to take a closer look at a photo, I get a "404 Not Found." I bet I'm not supposed to delete those... but what *do* I do with them?) (I bet this would be simpler in HTML, right?)