Here's a corner of "Dinner at Rose and Carl's House. It's the first piece quilted on the new machine, so to a certain extent it was an experiment. Working on the dyed, felted blanket (the greenish background) created a lot of fuzz, but otherwise it went very well. No tension problems at all. I posted about this one earlier this month with another photo.
I blanket-stitched the edges of the blanket by hand with some nice variegated wool yarn (bought in Alaska if memory serves). It's funny about beautiful yarn--it's so appealing that I end up buying even though I live in a hot place where I'll never wear it. Oh, and about the blanket--it used to be white, then our prior cat Meruit peed on it and Pat washed it in hot water so the pee spot turned brown and the blanket shrank and felted somewhat. I put it away thinking someday I'll do something with that; last summer I dyed pieces of it cut from around the now discarded brown spot. It makes a nice background for this piece, and it's evocative because Rose and Carl, my grandparents, were Minnesota people.
This is a detail from "Catherine in Rajasthan." I'm not happy with the colors in the photo. The background cotton is a turmeric yellow with green shading, though the green dominates this picture, and the contrasting colors are much brighter. It did give me a chance to play with beads again, and I attached a bunch of brass bells, the kind dancers in India wear around their ankles. The tassels were purchased several years ago when they were on sale; they weren't the right colors for this quilt so I painted them with diluted fabric paints.