A Wall Hanging of Pears

On Friday, I received the new copy of McCall's Quilting magazine and my eye was caught by a wall hanging - Pear Still Life - designed by Joyce Robinson that was not only beautiful but was done with a technique that I had never tried.  I had black and orange in my stash so on Saturday I picked up some bright green batik and a chunk of brown from my LQS (local quilting store for those who are new to quilting) and today I began cutting out the pieces from the templates given in the magazine. 

I just love the website for McCall's quilts; I've made a few of their quilts... mostly from their Golden Quilt collection but their magazine has some lovely ideas for quilts also. Lots of scrappy block quilts which are my favorites.

I had a kitty helping out so thought it would be advisable to wait until tomorrow to do the applique/quilting to finish up.

So here is what I got done in about 3 hours today. 

The technique used to appliqué the pieces onto the quilt also is the quilting.  The background is stippled and the bottom/table is done with lines.

I've never applied fabric to fabric in this way before... I've always turned the edges under and hand sewed the edges down, then added the batting and backing and quilted. 

But here, the quilt 'sandwich' is done; the pieces are pinned on.... and the quilting will begin.





I'll use green thread to make it look like the 'pears' are round and 3-dimensional.  Then I'll use orange thread to zigzag the stems on with only a few lines to pin down the leaves.  None of the edges are turned under so this should be a pretty quick quilting job.








Though I still have remnants of a cold, I feel so much better than I have for the past two weeks.  Hopefully I will lose this little cough and I won't get another cold for years and years!