What a beautiful day!

The sun is shining, it's warm, my kitty is over his mystery ailment and I have more ideas for new quilts than I can keep up with. And I have chocolate, lots of beautiful chocolate, as my sweetie outdid himself with this gorgeous Godiva chocolate basket for Valentine's Day. And a belated Happy Valentine's Day to everyone out there!

I've been back to work on some journal quilts and am getting excited. My goal for these journal quilts is to try new ideas, techniques and materials and see what I like, what I don't like and what I absolutely love. Bit by bit, I think I'm finding my voice as an art quilter.

Rich, intricate quilting is definitely part of that. The more I do, the more ideas I have. I love the texture created by the quilting, the contrast and sheen of thread against a different colored background and the subtle effects of thread matching the background.

These two small pieces, made over the weekend, are influenced by the zentangles I've been drawing, and I'm excited by the effects of the variegated thread. Both are entirely free-hand quilted, using my Singer 15-30 treadle sewing machine.

On the materials front, I can now say I'm definitely a fan of MistyFuse. I've been using fusibles forever, but just got some MistyFuse before the holidays and am now trying it out. A few days ago I decided to try a simplified version (rough draft, so to speak) of an idea I've been playing with. I appliqued one section by turning under edges and stitching it down, another with a paper-backed fusible and other sections with MistyFuse.

The MistyFuse sections were super easy to sew, very soft to the touch and stayed down well. A substantial improvement over the stitched sections, which puckered and pulled and the paper-backed fusible, which was stiff and hard to sew.

I'm working on another project with MistyFuse, but it's time to run to get to quilt guild, so more later.