Off The Wall Friday

Again this week, I'm linking up to Off The Wall Friday over at Nina-Marie's blog. Last week you saw the background for the piece I'm showing today. (Check out what everyone else has on their design wall by clicking on the Off The Wall button on the right-hand side of this page.)

This week I have continued work on my second piece for the SAQA exhibit explained here. The background is machine quilted. Hopefully, it looks like snow. The main design for this piece is made of hand and machine appliqued bias strips, pieced blackbirds, and fused bird shapes. Last week I only had the background finished. This week I got all of the birds put on and the bias strips appliqued around most of them.

I will finish adding the bias strips and add some beads to make the snow glisten. I will be auditioning some beads that look like sunflower seeds to see if I want to add those to the piece.

This is a close up of some of the birds. If you click on the picture, you can see how the blackbirds have been pieced. The cardinal is made of red silk.

I've also worked on some English paper pieced hexagons. I started out using 3/4" hexagons; but once I saw a quilt made of tiny hexagons at The Sanctuary (in this post), I changed my mind and redid it using 1/2" hexagons. The littler hexagons are on the top piece; what I had finished already with the 3/4" hexagons is below it.

The basting threads are still in the pieces and won't be removed for awhile. We are heading to my son's (a 10 hour drive) soon, and I figure this will be a good take-along project for the car.

Check back next Friday to see if I have made any progress. Please leave a comment; I love to read them. It is nice to know that I'm not just "talking" to myself!