What a neat day!

I spent the day sewing at Helen's place with a whole bunch of good friends. Helen made a really lovely chicken soup and homemade olive bread, and others had brought savoury muffins, pizza, and date scones - it was all very tempting but the only thing that was gluten free was the soup! I did ask permission to scrape the topping off one piece of pizza though and it was yummy.

I had decided to treat myself and start another quilt even though I have about six unfinished. There is a challenge that I've been wanting to make a quilt for but didn't think I'd be able to meet the deadline. It is to depict one or more of the four elements, finished size 1.5m x 0.5m, i.e., long and thin. I have quite a stash of earth fabric so when I was invited to spend the day sewing with company I decided it would be a good occasion to try this technique I found on L Carlene Raper's site. It didn't require too much concentration to freehand cut the strips and more or less randomly sew them together which is a good thing when you are chatting as well as sewing. At the moment they are still just strips placed on the design wall. I still need to trim them and sew them one to another. I have laid a few patches on top of bits I will cut out of the strips too, before I sew them together. And do I want to put a border on it, or inset in it? Do I want to couch something on the surface or will the quilting be enough? How will I quilt it? Does it need more sky? Less sky? More black? Less apricot? Will I cut the edges straight???? Hmmmm....