Quietly working with some surprising outcomes!

In late October my husband and sister and I took a road trip to Austin Tx. to attend the wedding of my niece.  It was a beautiful wedding and the weather was great. Outside our hotel was this river walk and it was really fun to walk around a bit.

For quite a while now I have been working on an improv piece that I started in 2016 I believe, in a class taught by a fellow guild member Kris Khan.  I loved the colors I had chosen and we were doing improv strip piecing. 

I had a few nice strips and then decided it needed to change direction a bit. Once I did that I was not sure where to go so back in a bag with all the fabric it went until a couple sew days this year with my lqg. I had so many solids set aside for this piece and I could be using them in other things but I didn't want to break up the fabrics in case I would never find them again or horror...use them up elsewhere!!!

So....what does that have to do with my Austin River walk pictures? Finally in laying out the strips I was able to see and feel the beauty of the river.  I think I figured out that I have to have that little connection to something emotional in order for me to say a piece is done. Well that is my theory for this one at least. 

River Walk

33.5" x 28"

Improv strip piecing

flowy organic line quilting

On the trip down to Texas we stopped in Waco and of course had to go see what we could see.  Magnolia is pretty run over by tourists and the products they say are mass made but it was fun just popping in. 

My favorite moment is making my sister pose with me near the "Demo Day" sign. 

In other news....another quilt guild I am in had the opportunity to do a bit of outreach in the community at the Joslyn museum. They are having their first ever quilt exhibit Pattern and Purpose: American Quilts from the Shelburne Museum.  Our Modern Quilt guild spent a few hours with the public talking about quilting and improv. 

We had fun right there in front of that huge Chihuly.  

A few other inspirational pieces that might show up in my quilts some day. A psychedelic  bicycle sculpture down by the river walk. (Ai Weiwei's Forever Bicycles) and the state capital building near there. 

More projects that I have been working on will hopefully get blogged soon. Fingers crossed!!

Linking up with Lorna at Let's bee social 
and 
My quilt infatuation NTT