Abscence makes the heart grow fonder

I finally have a terrible photo to share with you of my finished "Log Cabins at the Beach" top.  Terrible because unless you have a really good space to take photos in, it is impossible to fit these large type of quilts into one shot and you get freaky perspective angles going on (the desk in the bottom RH corner doesn't help either).  Standing on a chair and holding the camera above my head can only achieve so much! 

I was unsure whether the top right hand corner would appear too dark, as it has more than it's fair share of the deeper stone colour in the background, and several blocks around it appear to join on creating a large block of colour.  Plus I ended up using a grey strip in this background section (the only place which uses grey other than the actual log cabins) - due to my poor non-existent planning skills when calculating fabric requirements (she'll be right mate).  Surprisingly I don't mind it, it can be amazing what disappears once you view the quilt as a whole.  However, I would be interested in what you think... please leave me a comment, as it is easy enough to change at this stage, not so easy once I start quilting! 

Talking of quilting, I have a rough idea of what to do... if you can imagine a square spiral falling over the log cabin areas (pretending where there are partial blocks that the log cabin does make a full square), and then doing quite a tight all over round spiral in the background areas (ever seen Tula Pink's quilts in her book??)  I am semi-tempted to do the square spiral quilting in large/naive hand quilting... but does that sound like a lot of work or what??

Now that the design wall is clear, I finally felt it was again time to bring out an old friend, and my faithful box of scraps.  No, I haven't become a "modern" only girl... nothing like the soft, subtle blend of fabrics in my mock Japanese Taupe collection.  I say mock because while there are some proper Japanese taupes, they are mostly just a mixture of all-sorts left over from other beloved projects.

Gail Pan BOM Bluebirds and Berries

It seems I'm up to Block 6.

It doesn't take long to go from a blank canvas...

...to an almost finished vine
(there is always more blanket stitch to do!)

 

Tomorrow I can tackle the bird block...

How's your spelling?  Is that how you spell "abscence"?  I've done a spell check and it doesn't pick it up as wrong... but it looks so weird!