Star and Leaf Quilt Part 6

I haven't been posting as often this year.  I am working on things, but progress is very slow.  I am in the throws of spring cleaning so my work time on projects is greatly diminished for the moment.  Sooner or later things will pick up again.  Hand quilting a large quilt  does not go quickly either, so for every few hours of work time I have only a little bit of progress to show for it.

Last blog post I showed that I had created some stencils to use for quilting.  I have started implementing those in the quilting now.  It is all an experiment.  I quilted the main leaf and probably should have left it at that if I wanted the quilt finished any time soon.  I decided that there was just too much negative space and decided to fill it in with a few small quilted maple leaves and spirals.  The spirals helped fill the space, but also represent the helicopter-like seeds that spiral down when the trees drop their seeds each year. Although it is harder to see it in the photo, the orange really stands out against the brown fabric when viewing it in person.

I had originally quilted in some connecting lines between the maple leaves.  However, it made the block look over-quilted compared to the star block.  I removed those lines.  The block looks better.  However, while removing them I also ripped out one of the stitches of the maple leaf, so one of those will have to be done over.  It won't take that long.  I will be finishing that up tonight.  Things are moving along with the quilt.  I am about a third of the way finished with the blocks.  I hope to have it finished before too long. 

I am also working on a couple of other projects which I will be blogging about shortly.  I am one step closer to getting started on the Flamenco Dancer doll.  I have most of the materials gathered for the  armature.  I will be experimenting with some new techniques for this doll.  It will be the largest doll I have ever made.  More on that in coming blog posts.  I am also working on another project that is more or less a papier mache' project.  It is a fun project, but it takes up much more time than you would ever think.  More on that in a few blog posts.