Bird on a bee hive patchwork garden

I think I have already told you guys a gazillion times how much I love Janet Bolton's applique style in A Patchwork Garden. Well, I'll tell you one  more time. I soooo dig her innocent, folksy, hippy, child-like, loosey goosey way of making applique. But much as I try, I can't do it like her. I so want to. But I have finally admitted it to myself. I am much too anal.

This is the book that I wish I own.

This was the unfinished quilt I started possibly 8 years ago.

And Janet's Beehive and Wild Cherries was what I was trying to make.

I honestly was going to leave the quilt unfinished FOREVER because I felt it wasn't me. I couldn't feel the love.

This week I was feeling a bit traumatized by my Nikon DSLR camera. After a few months of struggling with images getting corrupted, I finally sent it to the service center. Based on the conversation with the customer service staff, I'm not confident they will even be able to do anything to fix the issue because data corruption happens now and then. Short of them giving me a brand new camera (which they won't), I may end up having to buy a new camera. When I was taking photos for my last pattern, once I shot a few hundred images only to find them all corrupted. I nearly had a mental breakdown. I had to resort to taking a few photos at a time just to be safe. Hubs and I don't have any luck with cameras. We are defintely going back to a Canon for my next camera. I wonder what's a good, solid model to buy?

Anyhoos, where was I? Without my Nikon, I dug out my old Canon S100 to see if the camera still worked. Well, it still sort of don't work. The Auto mode is totally shat now. With the manual mode, I could still take images but not all the setting work. So I was taking some test pics and I used the 8 year old unfinished quilt as my test object. The more I looked at the unfinished quilt with the stray threads hanging loose the more irritated I got. I can't believe I let this thing sit around for 8 years. What's wrong with me?

So I started working on it. The first thing I did was to finish the beehive. But the quilt still looked empty. So I added a blue bird.

The blue bird is done in needle turn applique and finally I feel like this is my quilt. It was missing a bird all these while!

For the backing, I vaguely followed Janet Bolton's method which is very simple. Fold in the raw edges and topstitch. I don't like that I can see the stitches on the backing!

My applique aesthetic is clean and simple. That's my style so I think I'll stick to that from now on.

I can't believe it myself. Finally got this UFO done and done. I want to tell Janet!