Play 2 different ways

Yesterday was a '10'... well yesterday afternoon evening was anyway. I spent the a.m. unpacking reorganizing from the weekend retreat. Not great fun but necessary. Anyone that teaches this type of art knows that for every teaching engagement you have 1 to 2 days (or more) of ordering/stocking, preparation and cleanup in addition to travel. BUT IT's SO FUN IN CLASS... that it's all worth it.
Every time I teach, I come home antsy to get to playing at my own thing. I have several painted pieces, some demos... so decided to hop on quilting one of my demos of a magnolia blossom so as to replace one of my samples. It's good to change things around sometimes. Here's one of my previous samples.
In this previous piece, I rather liked the floating inner border/sashing of sorts and was challenging myself to think of a way to keep the same idea going without adding sashing/border fabric. I may have figured it out... here's what I'm doing.... Using a water erasable blue marking pen, I drew a 3/4 inch channel around the floating floral. I then meandered all the way around the quilt within the channel. Then, back to the quarter inch foot, feed dogs back up, reduced the top down pressure foot tension, and used the either edge of the pressure foot to just plain sew a straight line off the sides of the meandering.
I THINK I'm going to like the end result. I'll keep you posted.


The other 'play' of the day was a real one. Date night!!!! Ray and I went to the to see "Fences" by August Miller. This play won both the Tony and Pulitzer prize for drama in 1987. It was SPECTACULAR in my book. If you are a Southern Calif. reader , this production is at the South Coast Rep. theater in Orange County, Ca til the 21st of Feb. If you're on the east coast, I 'hear' Denzel Washington will be later this year performing in a revival on Broadway.It's both humurous and serious. Watch for this play.