Spring Cleaning

Though it doesn't feel like spring yet here on the Oregon Coast I've been inspired by Bonnie Hunter of Quiltville to do a little sprucing up for the season.  After all, by the calendar it is spring, and after Easter, so it must be time to get out all the sunny spring household items, right?  But I am sticking with the flannel sheets for a while yet!  I finally am taking off my Christmas Quilt (I know, I know...I intend to make a proper winter quilt soon!) and replacing it with the sunny blue and yellow Round Robin Quilt.

This one was made from an internet swap.  It was a row by row swap, and we each included our own fabrics.  Each participant made a row of 8 inch blocks for each quilt in the same pattern.  My poor box got lost a couple of times, but eventually I got it back with all the lovely rows ready to sew together into a bright and cheery quilt!  Each row is signed by the maker.  My husband thought it was odd to have a quilt with peoples writing on it, but I like remembering all the people who worked on it.  I am no longer in touch with any of them, but it was really fun making the quilt and working on all the other ones that passed through.  I believe that somewhere I have a journal that traveled with it, I should see if I can find it!

This is the first queen size quilt I ever machine quilted, all the previous ones were done by hand.  I used my 1979 Kenmore and it was a super tight fit in those middle strips, but we made it!  All of the white is stippled down, with a bit of outlining, etc in the colored pieces.  The batting is Warm and Natural and I love the old fashioned feel and look of this quilt.  It gets softer and drapier every time I wash it!

It  measures around 88 x 92 inches, a bit small for my current pillow top mattress, but I still love it and enjoy having it on my bed for spring.  The label is getting a bit faded, but I can see that it was started in April of 2002.  It must have been finished before September of 2003 because I showed it at the Sea of Quilts show of that year. 

This is what's on my bed today !  Now I will go document it in my Quilt Album program so that I won't have to try to decipher that faded label again!

Make sure you go to Bonnie's Blog to see everyone else's quilts or to add what you have on your own bed! - What's On Your Bed?

52 Week Challenge - Week 1

Happy New Year! As always I am off to a slow start, but it's not how we begin the race, but how we finish, right?

My friend Kym has started a 52 week challenge on her blog - the idea is to actually finish something once a week and show it. It does not have to be a big item, or something totally done in one week, so it should be fairly easy for me to follow along, and hopefully will force me to come up with some kind of a blog post once a week!
This is a journal cover I finished this week. It was made as a custom item for Etsy. Isn't it sweet? I have a few other panels from the line and plan on making them up as journals also. I used my journal cover pattern, centering the little bird on the front. I used pink and green fabrics to go with this as well as a stripe made of blue floral on the back to bring in the colors of the bird.

I free motion quilted around the bird and the twig, and it really looks nice. I really love making these journals and am always on the lookout for a cute small panel that would like nice as a cover. They are also really pretty using just strips of batik or other fabrics. I bought enough composition books this summer to make one a week for a year, but I promise I won't show you a journal every week for this challenge!

I suppose I'd better get going, after all, I did make a resolution to start getting to work on time, and if I don't hustle I'll mess that one up on the very first day!

Off to the races, or rather the quilt shop!

Pamela