It's new to me.....

A couple of weeks ago I bought a used Bernina Artista 180e to keep at our house in NC. Here is a picture of all of the stuff right after I wheeled it into our house in GA. It came with 8 different feet, embroidery software and hoops and all of these cases full of miscellaneous stuff. I bought it from someone who works at the Atlanta Sewing Center. It has 87 hours on it and has been serviced every year so it has been well cared for. The owner was upgrading to a different Bernina. I have never owned a Bernina and am excited about the machine. Any tips from some of you Bernina owners. Also, how is it for free motion quilting?

Impression Reveal

Here is my quilt for latest Fiberactions challenge. I made this based on the above photo that I took in Venice a couple of years ago. I was trying to go for a more abstract look but as you can see my brain does not do abstract very well.

For this quilt I was also inspired by a new book that I got early last week. It is 'Quilted Symphony ' by Gloria Loughman and I highly recommend it. I was working on another quilt for the challenge but I really was just not excited about it so I started this one last Tuesday. First I cropped a section of the photo and printed it with the tile option on 4 sheets of paper. I used this as my pattern.

I then traced it on freezer paper and used the freezer paper as templates to cut the pieces. I used Steam-a-seam Lite as the fusible and after I was happy with my fabric choices I ironed them in place on a muslin backing. Of course this process took much longer than expected and I put in some late nights to make the deadline. I cut the dome pieces from 1 piece of batik and this took quit a bit of fussing to get the colors like I wanted them (it has over 50 pieces). I am not a big fan of fusing and I did find the quilting a bit challenging with the extra bulk of the fabric. Maybe one of these days I will tackle a quilt of the entire photo......now that would be an accomplishment!

What to do with this?

This is another UFO from almost a year ago. I was sick with an ear infection last year and still wanted to do something. I painted these 12 squares of fabric over a couple of days while recovering. They were then pieced together to create this quilt top. I liked it at the time and even started to quilt it (the four squares in the upper right are quilted). Now when I look at this I wonder what I was thinking.

The question is now what, if anything, to do with this. I have it hanging on my design wall so I can ponder it in passing. If I just abandon it I can salvage most of the batting and backing fabric. I could also use the unquilted squares as backing for another quilt. Of course the real challenge would be to rework this and turn it into something I like. I think this may be on my wall for a while since I am working on my Fiberactions piece that is due on the 15th. Any suggestions would be appreciated.