Just Another Snowy Sunday

Snow Sew Days are the best!

Like everyone I talk to these days, I am growing very weary of winter. We got the mother load of snow last night and it continued all day; shovel, shovel, shovel. On the upside, despite the really high blizzard-y winds, the power managed to stay on and I was able to brew a pot of brown holy water, do a wee bit of long overdue some cleaning and spend the rest of the day puttering away in my sewing corner.

The bits and pieces for Hope Lives in Pink Houses were perched on top of my printer in an old slipper box so rather than put them away when I was tidying up I decided to go ahead and build the flimsy. I hadn't put much thought into how I would attach the elements and had already free pieced several improv slabs to use for fillers and borders. I don't tend to obsess much about free pieced quilts...I just like to keep moving forward and let the pieces fall where they may.

Cut. Sew. Press. Cut. Sew. Press.

Sometimes I'm happy with it, sometimes I'm not; only rarely will I rip out my work...instead, I'll cut it up and sew some more. I play, I have fun with it following only my whim, saving my overly critical eye for other projects & precision piecing.

Hope Lives In Pink Houses 

This afternoon I made a couple more trees and began building borders. It's a really busy piece so it seemed that a small white border would allow a bit of space for the eye to rest. Rather than simply stitching a border all around the center medallion I came up with the idea to extend the borders out to the edges...it's not difficult to do, but it is a bit more interesting and I think it helps a little to break up all that crazy free piecing.  I ended up incorporating some selvedge strips (all the cool kids are using them) and sliced up my improv churn dash block, adding each part to opposite borders. Notice a pair of pink angel wings on the left border just beneath some heaven bound flying geese doves?

Right now, I kinda like it.
I also think it might be finished.
When I am ready to quilt it I will know for sure that's it's done.