Blogger's Quilt Festival

I was so excited to see that it is time once again for the Blogger's Quilt Festival.  It is always so much fun to see so many beautiful finished quilts all in one place.  Inspiration overload!

It didn't take me long to decide that I should post about OMG.  It was the last quilt I finished before Irma, back when life was simpler.

I was lucky enough to find two volunteers to hold it up outside on a nice sunny day.   It can be hard to get good pictures of big quilts.  

 The border gave me no end of grief and had me dumping the whole quilt in a corner for months before I was brave enough to try again.  It looks great as long as you don't get too close.

This quilt started in 2014 as an attempt to put tiny scraps to use.  I was inspired by The Birthday Quilt and Omigosh to try making nine patches from 1 inch strips.   Making tiny little nine patches is a tiny bit addictive.  Once you start, it gets hard to stop.

After several years of making nine patches, I decided to try out an alternate block or two.

I worked up a few trial blocks and took votes before deciding on a churn dash block with a tiny nine patch in the center.

That led to a couple more years of making alternate blocks.  Look how cute and little they are!

 Eventually they moved to the design wall and I planned a layout using graph paper and colored pencils.  Truly my favorite design tools ever.  

 Thanks so much for reading about my quilt, be sure to visit Amy and enjoy lots of eye candy.  Get an icy beverage first, it can take a while to enjoy it fully.  

Blogger's Quilt Festival

Choosing a favorite quilt to show in Amy's Blogger's Quilt Festival was not an easy task.  I finally narrowed it down to two rainbow quilts that I made last year as part of my ongoing Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  I almost chose Rainbow Crumb Parade because I've been doing so much with crumbs lately, but instead chose ScrapHappy Squares because of the fun way that it evolved over time.  The original block idea came from Quiltmakers 100 Block issue.  It was block 171 in the second edition that the magazine put out and was called Boxed In.
 I made one in January of last year using blue, which was the color for that month.  I liked the way it came out so much that I kept making one each month for the rest of the year.  I keep a drawer of 2.5 inch squares on hand, and sorting through it each month searching for 25 unique squares was a lot of fun.  When the blocks were all done near the end of the year I sat and stared at them for a long time wondering how I should put them together.  The outside of each block was a white border which meant something needed to go in between.  After trying out several different colors of sashing strips, a blog reader sent me a link to a quilt that she had seen with a Garden Lattice setting.  Well, that was it!  I searched the web for similar settings until I came up with an idea that would work and shrunk it down to look proportional with the blocks.  It came together quickly at that point, and was done in time to give away for Christmas.  My mom has Sunday school class that sponsors families in need each Christmas and this one one of the stack of quilts that I sent to them last year.  I still think of it from time to time, hoping it found a happy family and it is keeping someone warm and cozy. 

Happy Day

Happy last day with students. Start of summer vacation. Happy Quilt Festival. I had so much fun going through all the blogs with the online quilt festival last year that I had to participate again. I think I posted my Elm Creek Sampler last year. One of the things that is fun about sampler quilts is that in trying out lots of new patterns, every once in a while you like one so much that you decide to make a whole quilt out of it. Pineapple Welcome is just such a quilt. I had dabbled in paper piecing, but never tried it on an entire quilt. It is just the right size to hang in my entryway and so I decided to make it a true welcome quilt by adding the word in a variety of languages around the border. It is finished with a scalloped border which wasn't nearly as difficult as I had feared. So be sure to visit Amy's blog and check out some of the other quilts and their stories. You can also visit my 500th post and enter the giveaway drawing. Just a few more days 'till my birthday when I will pick a winner. For now it is the first day of the rest of my summer. Happy quilting everyone!!

My Favorite Quilt

Every time someone asks about my favorite quilt I change my mind. Amy did a poll for her 100th post quite a while ago and I chose my Road to the Marathon quilt. Now when I look back over my blog history, I really like my Elm Creek quilt. The colors are bright and happy, it reminds me of reading the books, and I love the fact that the blocks came out month by month and I followed them on a blog. That was before I had one of my own and discovered the rings of people who all kept up quilt blogs. I am still working on the hand quilting of this one. I'm not very adept at it, and I tend to avoid things that I am not confident about. It is on my list though, so it will be finished when it's number comes up. I'm off to sew something. It's Friday and I can sit at my machine without guilt. The online quilt festival is this week, so I hope you all get to spend a little time creating something.