August Take It Further Challenge

The theme for this month's challenge was "balance".

I was inspired to make this pillow from a few of the quilts I saw at a recent quilt show that sported labyrinth designs.

I know that the labyrinth is sometimes designed and implemented with meditative purposes, and that meditation can be used in the pursuit of balance. I balanced the two sides of the pillow by reversing the colors and tufting it with the same button on each side.

Stitching this was very calming and I enjoy tracing my finger through the design.



Enjoy!
You can click on the pictures for a larger version.

Finished! Almost!

I finally finished my American Hero quilt top. I will send it out this week for quilting and then i will have to put the binding on and it will finally be finished! Yea!

The white block on the bottom says Thank You in blue with a couple of stars in outline embroidery.


Here is a teaser picture of my Take It Further challenge piece.

TIF Crazy Quilt block

This month's Take It Further Challenge theme was noticing the small things.
Here is the color scheme.


It is due to my entomology classes from college, but when I think of small things, they are almost always bugs. I also happened to be perusing Sharon B's 100 details right before the challenge was posted so I was already in CQ thinking mode. Luckily enough, Purple was one of the colors for the challenge, so I decided to embellish my first CQ block.


Here is the whole block. I'm going to call it "Going Buggy".


I put a few jokes in it, like the grasshopper jumping with a pogo stick...
You can't really see them in black, but there are my first miserable attempts at ribbon embroidery.


A pair of lovebugs


Buttons for the sake of buttons, experimenting with a different embellishing style than I'm used to...



My cute spider took a couple of tries to get right. She is holding a tiny little rhinestone flower.


She has time to smell the flowers, as you can see she already has dinner wrapped up in her web...
(practicing my bullion stitch)


So that's it! My first block. I'm glad I'm done with it. I will have to sketch out my designs next time instead of free handing them all, so they won't look so sloppy.