Long Time Gone, Continued

At Spring Market in St. Louis a couple weeks ago, I talked to Jen Kingwell in her booth and told her I was working on Long Time Gone, one of her great patterns. The fellow assistng her in the booth asked if I wanted a photo of the original Long Time Gone, as they had it hanging on the corner of their booth:

It's not a great shot but it was nice to see the original, with those soft yet dynamic Australian style fabrics. He then said he would take my photo with Jen and before I could decline, here we are:

In March I started working on Long Time Gone when I found a blog that was doing it as a once a week project, gnomeangel.com. If I kept up, my quilt top would be done by July 2017. I am glad to say I've kept up, even got a bit ahead in parts, and today I began playing with putting sections together:

Section 1

Most of the rest of the parts

I still have a few more sets of blocks to make and this is not the final layout, I just wanted to see them all on the wall. The turquoise sashing I purchased last week for this project. ALL the rest of the fabrics came from my stash, from strings bags, from shoe boxes of leftovers, from fat quarters pulled from boxes in the closet and from yardage on the closet shelves. So, it's a free quilt, right?

The response to this quilt has been exciting and I'll be teaching it as a once-a-month class starting in September 2017 and running for 6 months at a local quilt shop. It will be fun to see all the color combinations students come up with. And there is so much good stuff to teach with this quilt!

I've shared this post to Design Wall Monday.

At 3:20 p.m. I realized it was time to stop for lunch and clean up the studio. The great thing about having the Halo Sunday Sew and Sews come over once a month is I have to clear away the clutter before they come. Whenever I return from a trip, stuff gets put everywhere until I can sort through everything and put things in their place. This trip I had a lot of computer work to do, reports to write, classes to plan, supply lists to update, and a big job to check on--more about that soon.

My Halo Star Medallion Quilt is coming along nicely--I just can't show it to you yet. Another reason I enjoy spending time with the group of 15 who are working on this quilt--they appreciate what I've done and love to see what is coming next. I'm through the August patterns and September is almost done.

And I can't let this day go by without mentioning: STELLA TURNS TWO TODAY:

My husband and I will get to see her soon--she is such a character! We just love her to bits.

Let's quilt!

Barbara