WIP thursday? And an oldie

The week has gotten away from me, and I never got around to a WIP Wednesday post. Sometimes I think I just try to get things done so I'll have something to write about. But I don't really need to do that. Don't want it to become like homework--or deadlines. I had enough of those in school and my job. This should be fun. And my week has been good--a good dental checkup, a little antiquing, some Valentine sewing/gift box filling. Even a little bit of housework because I kind of let that go lately. And I have been working on a quilt, but I just don't have much to show for it. Mostly the work has been in my head. Here are most of the fabrics I'm working with:

Some of the colors are a little off in this picture (the blue is really a dark teal), but they're a combo of pastels and rich dark fabrics. I was afraid of color transfer but they pre-washed just fine. (Yup, I'm a pre-washer). 

I've been trying to teach myself to draw on a grid in the Paint program on my computer. It's slow going. Last time I designed a quilt in Paint, I imported a photo of a drawing I had done with marker on graph paper. I didn't want the marks to show on this quilt because I really want to see how the colors work next to each other and the black lines will detract. Hence, the laborious drawing and light gray lines. I've got this much done (one fourth):

If you can hardly see it, that's a good thing. I could just start cutting fabric and trying things out on the design wall, but it's a big quilt, and I can't afford to waste fabric. So I'll keep drawing. And then I can start playing around with the colors. 

Since it is Thursday, I also have a Throwback Thursday--Quilt Edition item to share. This is a quilt I made around 1996 or '97. My daughter's room had a sunflower theme. Okay, confession time: it still has a sunflower theme because I haven't gotten around to updating the decor--and besides, it's now my quilting room and makes me happy when I'm working in there. So we planned a sunflower quilt based on instructions in Jean and Valori Wells' book, Everything Flowers, which has a copyright date of 1996 (that's how I dated this quilt--no other good documentation) 

Notice sunflower wallpaper border, too. Yup, still there.

Paper foundation patterns for the sunflowers were provided, as well as a general plan for the background blocks (which were foundation pieced on muslin), but it was up to us to decide where to put the flowers and to random piece the background blocks. The sunflowers were supposed to be more fragmented, but we liked them whole. This was one of my first experiences with paper piecing and improvisational piecing. I found that I really enjoyed the paper piecing, but I wasn't confident about the improv piecing. I still like how it turned out, though. Because there were so many seams, and muslin under some parts, it was pretty thick, so I did minimal hand quilting in the ditch around major pieces and a leaf pattern in the border. 

The quilt is 28 3/4 by 34 3/4 inches, cotton with polyester batting, muslin on the back, and cotton hand quilting thread. It's never been washed. It's on a wall that gets little direct sunlight, so it's held its color well. 

I'm linking up today with Lorna at Sew Fresh Quilts for Let's Bee Social and with Kelly at My Quilt Infatuation for Needle and Thread Thursday. Have a good weekend, everybody!