Bloggers Quilt Festival - A Notable Quilt, Though Not a Favorite

Here's my entry in the Spring 2009 Bloggers Quilt Festival being held this week over at Park City Girl blog.


It's the HGTV Strolling the Block quilt from years ago. I didn't start it until well into the monthly postings of the patterns. And I wasn't a quilter at the time. It just seemed like a fun project to do. I learned a lot of about fusible applique (i.e., don't cut out the pattern pieces from the fabric and then cut out pattern pieces from the fusible web and attempt to attach the two together LOL!).

Many summer days were spent sitting by my friend Anna's pool with our daughters' high school friends asking if they too could help with the blanket stitching around each piece....I almost felt like Huck Finn whitewashing the fence, but it certainly knocked a lot of hand-sewing out of my court for me.

To this day, the quilt is sandwiched, stitched in the ditch, and awaiting some free motion in the sky of each block when it can finally be bound and then who knows what will happen to it. There's a lot of embellishment on each block...buttons, seashells in a net, beads, yarn...not exactly conducive to being a quilt to snuggle under. It's definitely a display piece, and I don't really have anywhere it fits in.

My once teenage, eager to blanket-stitch daughter is now 25 and moving out into her own home next week. I'll be turning her bedroom into my new quilting studio, so maybe this quilt will finally have a place to hang. It is, after all, the project that led me to quilting, not to mention a catalyst for the memories of getting here.

I think that this will be the 'inaugural' project for my new space. Finishing up something old in something new sounds like a good plan.