Today is the day!!!

June 4, 2023 No Comments

This afternoon Michael and I will be boarding a Delta Flight to Johannesburg and will be traveling in Africa for 3 weeks!!

We start out in Mozambique where we will check on the fate of the Cheetahs that we saw released back in 2021…..

The Days the Cheetahs arrived

We will also be checking on the 24 lions that were released there in 2018. At last count, there were well over 90!!

We spent 6 weeks in the Mozambique camp in 2021 and it feels like we are returning home again….

I am hoping to spend a day or two just photographing and videoing, and will hopefully see more of the Saddle-Billed Storks that I am collage appliqueing….

After that week, we fly back to South Africa and will spend another week on the Eastern Cape where Michael will be doing some conservation research.

We spend the last week in the Kalahari Desert area, working alongside scientists doing genetic research on (the very rare) Black and White Rhinos.

We are both looking forward to this trip and I can’t wait to tell you about ALL of it!!

I am not sure that internet will be available so I have some quilting posts queued up for the next few weeks, but I am hopeful to add some “man on the ground” stories too.

I will probably not be cross-posting to various Facebook groups, so IF you only see this blog because of those posts, you will lose out on this trip.

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Background quilting…..

June 3, 2023 1 Comment

We have been looking at the quilting and planning process for finishing my Monarch Challenge for the last two days. You can check out the posts here……

https://francesquilts.com/2023/06/01/monarch-quilting-part-1/

https://francesquilts.com/2023/06/02/quilting-planning/

I FINALLY figured out exactly how I wanted to quilt this background, so here we go……

(IF you receive notification of this blog via email, the video will NOT appear and you will need to click into the actual blog to get to the video. It’s one of those “technical” issues I can’t do anything about!!)

At this point, I am REALLY close to finishing the quilt and will be posting about it in the next week.

HOWEVER, I will be in Africa when the posts run and will probably not have access to the internet during that time. This means that I will not be able to cross-post to Facebook groups, so if you get to my blog thru those posts, you will not see them.

Can I encourage you to go ahead and subscribe to the blog so that you get an email when it posts? It is the best way to be sure that you don’t miss a single thing.

PLUS…..who knows when photos and videos from Africa might appear and you wouldn’t want to miss those.

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Quilting Planning

June 2, 2023 No Comments

Yesterday, I showed you my quilting work on the major elements of the Monarch Challenge. Now it was time to quilt the background.

If I was a GOOD planner, I would already have made that decision but instead, I did the other things that I knew first.

Now it was time to think about possibilities. Sometimes I think that this is the hardest part about FMQ….figuring out WHAT to quilt!!

How do YOU accomplish this?

Here is a video of a few of my ideas. I hope that you enjoy…..

As you see, I found several ideas…..maybe too many!! Once I decided how I was going to quilt it, the final step was actually putting the stitches in.

Come back tomorrow to see the background finished!!

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