Goodbye, Summer...

It's the beginning of September already, and the skies in Northern California are a vibrant blue.  Amongst the masses of green trees that carpet the hills and shade the streets there are hints of gold and orange -- a coming attraction of the next season, while we enjoy the remaining days of summer.

Those blue/green/gold colors remind me of this quilt I designed, called WYOMING STAR:

In this quilt, I decided to try something different and instead of doing the whole quilt in Diagonal Satin Stitch I added some easy stitch variations that would look like fabric patterns. Here's an up-close look at the design that shows you the stitches that give the effect of fabric swatches:

And I also decided to use DMC floss for the background colors, instead of my usual ecru #5 pearl cotton.  DMC floss is much easier on the fingers when pulling the needle through the canvas, don't you agree?  So once all the pearl cotton areas are stitched, it's fun to relax and just fill in the background sections with the finer, stranded floss.  And that makes WYOMING STAR a great project for the last lazy days of summer!