Fall Leaf Completion

It's almost officially autumn and it's raining - again.  I guess its better than snow.  Congratulations to Deb at Aspen Hill for her contribution of her fun plaid quilt to our flikr site.  She's the winner of MQR#102 (to be sent after October 6th).

I put my nose to the grindstone and completed the contemporary fall leaf project.  The part about quilting it all by myself hurt the most - I love to hand them over to a professional quilter but I did my best and it actually lays pretty flat.

After the leaves were cut, I pieced them into their backgrounds using the very narrow seam allowance that we had described in previous projects.  Some were pouchy so I had to take a bigger allowance and make the curve shallower,  then press them to make them behave.  I added a center definiton in a color different from that leaf.  When all four were completed, I tried different layouts.

 I have done many vertical orientations so I decided to go with  the curvacious square.

Layering right sides together, I cut gentle curves from strips and sewed them, alternating sides and fabrics.

 This gave me more size and a good way to utilize the remaining fat quarters.  After arranging, I cut new curves from adjoining squares and sewed them together.

I layered the top, cotton batting and backing.  I outline quilted just outside the leaves, through the center definition and then meandered in the background.  The binding was made from the fatquarter scraps cut straight of grain.  (I wondered if this would work on the gentle curves.  It did.)

So our comment challenge for this next week ( and winner of MQR#103) is to let us know if you are going to the October AQS show in Des Moines  and what you are interested in seeing/ purchasing.  Looking forward to hearing from you!