On a Fruit Roll !

It was either fishing or bananas.  Bananas won out.

The pear quilt was a breeze compared to the struggle with bananas.  If nothing else, it is another learning curve - both in quilting and photography.  You're asking, 'just how hard is it to take a picture of a bunch of bananas?'  Not very, except when you want to make it into a fruit quilt/pattern.

For some reason this blog picture looks a lot better then the one I was working from.  There is a bit more contrast.  But that said, the lesson learned is to set up the picture with a strong direction of light to give heavier one way shadows. 

I use a light box for making the drawings for the templates.  How easy does this look! Notice there are no shadows drawn for templates.  Oop's!

First thought was to use contrasting colors.  The plate was going to be purple but as you can see it is red.  That is proving to be a bad decision.  I am now wishing I had stay with the white as in the picture and used a black background.  But the fusible applique is already ironed into place. So we will play with what we have.

Thank goodness for a bit of watercolors. By the time I had to seriously think of those darn shadows all the pieces were fused in place.  For the shadow between the bottom banana and the next one is done with fabric and a yellow/brown mixture of watercolor paint.

And this is as far as this one has gone.  

I've finally had the time to set up my short-long arm quilting machine and get the Christmas quilts on them.  Good days and bad days with that piece of equipment but I think I finally have the hang of it.  After hours of pulling tangled thread from underneath the quilts, taking out the bobbin and everything around it to clear out that mess of threads, breaking thread, setting tension.... the last quilt is on the machine.

I'll post the Christmas quilts after Christmas as they are secret gifts!

Also for the month of November I am on call for jury duty and have to call in every night.  So far my number has not been called.   And then three days a week I am doing Zumba.  And then there are the books I can't keep my nose out of and also the morning hours spent on the computer looking at other people's quilt blogs.  No wonder the poor bananas are still hanging on the design wall.....

Happy quilting!