Bloggers Quilt Festival Entry

It started with the DQS10-Doll Quilt Swap 10.  When I first started my life as a reborn quilter, I quickly found blogs and flickr and started my blog.  After all I learned to quilt in the early 1990's on Quiltnet listserv internet quilt guild emailing and swapping.  As I found new blogs and started swapping I was struggling with finding the quilter in me that had been buried for more than a decade.

My partner in the DQS10 was Leah from England.  She is a mother with two kids who had been quilting for a couple years.  She loves rainbows and wanted something that would offer inspiration to hang in her studio.

I designed this on the computer knowing I wanted to touch on the styles of the past and present including fabrics, colors, and techniques.  I played with modern fabrics that had mushrooms-I don't like them, and my favorite Sherbet Pips.  The paper pieced stars were something I had loved to do in the past with a favorite Hoffman 90s fabric.  The girl was also paperpieced inspired by a block I saw in Leah's flicker account.  I saw the girl as me and Leah both of us searching to express ourselves among the cacophony of the blogging quilt world. 

My design changed as I got feedback from those in the flickr group and now had my quilter in her stylish Sherbet Pips dress and aqua heels climbing a stack of blocks that represented my Amish and traditional past mixed with modern patterns and blocks styles.  I pulled these from pictures on my computer, some I had made for swaps.

I hand drew my girl.  I like showing people form the back as it draws the viewer in to almost imagine they are the one standing there like I did with this 1994 quilt for my Dad.

I decided to do away with the words and put the stars in an arch above the girls head.  The points all use hand dyed fabric I dyed long ago.  I also use hand dyed for her shoes, legs, face, and hair.

I pulled out a gorgeous rainbow fabric I had, again from my 90's stash which looked good against the Kona Ash gray.  I added the pale yellow inner border after some advice from those in the DQS10 flickr group. A hexie with dot fabric, wonky log cabin with bold modern fabrics, a postage stamp block with fabrics from one designers lines, and classic blocks with an Amish and modern twist.  One of the best parts of modern Internet quilting-posting color pictures easily.

When I was ready to quilt I was stuck .  I knew I wanted colorful swirls in pearl cottons and finally decided to mix in machine quilting on the block tower and regular hand quilting of swirls in the gray background.  I also wanted to add beads, as beading was a creative outlet during the time I was not quilting.  Some one at my Saturday Bee suggested matching the color of the bead to the color in the border so they extend the border rather then compete with it.

 

To read another post about this quilt including a little fairy tale that goes with it check out this post.  I think I was amazed when I was finished with it.  I had put so much of myself in it.  It is the quilt that helped me rediscover parts of my quilting self and also helped me to work out how I fit in the modern quilting world.  It was easy to send it on to its new owner.  For me this quilt was about the process, not the product. 

Use this link to get back the the QuiltBloggers Festival!

Keep dreaming...Colleen



Celebrated my 42nd birthday May 11.
 More on that, swap goodies,  and the continuing ear problem later.