Counting pieces

My Birmingham quilt is finished and finally in the mail... Here's a little glimpse for you:

This is the feather quilting inside one of the blocks. Most of the quilt is crosshatched, and the colours are rather bright (well, on the other parts of the quilt :) ) since they are a scrappy walk-through my batiks.

I'm rather proud of this little detail... I managed to quilt the year in, the side of the blue shape on top of the picture is two inches long. Full pictures and more will follow as soon as the quilt is on display at Birmingham (7th of August)

Now up to the next project(s)...

I intended to start with our quilt retreat bag for the rotary cutting mat and the in-built ironing surface yesterday. I actually managed to buy the piece of thin MDF which I will need for the ironing surface, but it was so hot and humid, that I didn't bring myself to get the sewing machine and start. You know, it was like "I've planned it all, made up the pattern and it's noting but a bit of straight-line sewing" and I'm certain one evening will be enough and that's... today. Keep your fingers crossed for me that I'm right :)

Well, what instead? I went onto my next competition quilt. The theme is "15 pieces blue", it's for the anniversary of a German quilt shop and the only requirements are to use 15 pieces of their logo colour, Kona Cotton Ocean, no matter what shape or size and that the quilt be 24" by 24" (okay, we're in Europe here, it's 60 cm x 60 cm)
Unfortunately I'm not permitted to share any pictures of my progress with you, but I'll try to describe it as good as possible. I'd decided to do some EPP in different blue shades of Fusions 4070, the only solid pieces to be the Ocean pieces. The pattern is based on one of Willyne Hammersteins Millefiori quilts. Progress-wise I'm pretty proud of myself, since I managed to put together a big part of the center star consisting of ten diamonds and (as yet) eight pentagons.

Hope to read you soon, Julia