Making you even more jealous

Some of you left wistful, envious comments on my last post about how lucky I am to be able to go to Judith's classes.  Well, you are right of course.  Judith's classes are always great fun and she is a brilliant teacher with a real gift for explaining techniques and encouraging us through her great projects.  I love being able to be there and know how lucky I am to have a modern class available to me when I can go. I'm also mightily privileged to know this amazing woman as a dear friend and sharing friendship and our stitching love together is a total winner of a combination! (She's also magnificently patient when I get myself in a muddle and just need to work my way through it with steam slowly escaping from my ears - happens every series of classes about week 3 or 4, just ask her!)

Anyway, at the risk of making you even more jealous, I have been going along on Thursday nights to Judith's pixellated heart project class.  Steam from ears happened at week 1 this time as I seriously underestimated how much time it would take me to lay out all those charms into rows and the lights in the building were going out while my layout still had holes in the middle! (Sorry Judith!)

Thankfully, weekly progress has been good since then and this weekend I took to basting and quilting my pixellated heart because I know that I cannot make class this week.  Vertical wavy line quilting made this a pleasure for me to work through and I am happy with the results.  I could be tempted to add two nice borders to this quilt and it would be big enough for my double bed, but I'd better resist as I plan to give it away to a friend.  I will try not to do so through gritted teeth 'cos I am falling a little bit in love with how it looks.

The pixellated heart works really well with contrasting volumes of fabrics and J recommended using low volume prints for the background.  My selection are a bit lower than low volume ("mute", perhaps?) being a medley of neutral print odds and ends I have had gathering for a long time.  Traditional cream on creams, vanilla oval elements, taupe swirling vines, pale beige damask prints and cafe au lait coloured spots keep this background very subdued but I really love the gentle variation in tone created by mixing them as charms, and it was a great way to use up some fabrics that I don't have enough left of to be a full background in any other quilt.  

I need to warn you now to keep an eye out for Judith's round up post when this class finishes in a couple of weeks.  There are all sorts of fabric combos going into pixellated heart quilts - vintage style, reverse fabric layouts, teal/turquoise hearts and a stunner in blacks - seriously watch out for them!

So, if I've made you really jealous today - nah nah nah nah nah!  Oops did that slip out?