I haven’t managed to spend much time on my quilt projects for some months now, but I did help with another group quilt done by some of the crafty ladies from the office. We made it for a coworker who is a serious sailor in his time away from the office; the pattern is "Sailing" by Lori Hein as seen in Love of Quilting magazine for May/June 2009. I was sick the night the group got together to do most of the piecing but signed up to do the binding when it got to that point. Once the top was done, the woman who was going to do the quilting reconsidered and asked if I’d swap tasks with her, which was fine by me. That gave me a chance to use the fancy BSR (Bernina Stitch Regulator) foot on my machine and practice my free motion quilting. (As usual, I first quilted straight lines in the ditch to secure the major sections—I used translucent thread for those.) I sort of followed the pattern for the sky and water, doing some horizontal meandering, but departed from their suggestions after that. I did freehand wiggly waves in two of the borders. For another, I traced the starfish from the applique section onto freezer paper and cut several of those shapes out to use as templates for a sort of starfish chain design. I made a few mistakes along the way—not all of my lines flow smoothly—but I ended up happy with the overall effect.