Here’s the little quilt I made for Vonnie, who won in my 5-year journalversary drawing. She said “vibrant earth tones”, and this is the result. I started with this group of fabrics and built from there, getting everything I needed from my stash. (I did manage to work some purple in there, too, even though it’s not exactly an earth tone.) I did the piecing on my Singer but waited to do the quilting until I had the Bernina, so I could do free motion work without swearing. I did stippling in some of the background areas and an egg and dart variation in the border, but mostly it’s straight lines in the ditch, since there’s plenty of visual interest just from the fabrics—two plaids, a couple of wiggly stripes, a marble, and realistic motifs in small, medium, and large scales. I used Bottom Line in the bobbin; it’s a fine polyester thread designed by Libby Lehman that’s supposed to be good at being inconspicuous, and it seems to work. Next time I’ll probably try regular thread just to see how my new machine handles it. I bet it’ll do fine.