Bloggers’ Quilt Festival – Spring 2010

Today’s the day!  Bloggers’ Quilt Festival is here!

The last two times I participated I knew immediately what quilts I was going to share with the world.  This time I have been perplexed, but ultimately decided on this quilt for a couple reasons:.

*I have digital pictures of it!

*I have digital pictures of it from when my littlest was a baby, and just look at that adorable little bald baby head!  Eek!  Seriously, I had no clue how bald my baby was when she was a baby.  Looking back at the pictures now I’m always shocked at my B A L D baby girl.

*It is a great example of what a great quilting bee can do.

I was a member of a real-life bee at the time, and we took turns being the leader of the next project.  As leader, you had to bring 2 ideas for the group to vote on.   Once an idea was chosen, everyone who wanted to participate had to make however many sets of blocks that they wanted in return.

All the blocks would be turned in to the current leader who would check them for accuracy and then split them up amongst all the participants.  Blocks made incorrectly or the wrong size were returned to the maker.  Sounds harsh, but totally necessary, and a key to the bee’s success.

It allowed everyone to chain-piece a bunch of identical blocks, but then end up with a scrappy quilt when the blocks were traded!  And unlike many of the bees around these days, *everyone* got blocks for a quilt each time — and as many blocks as you made!

Anyway, this quilt is the result of my turn.  I first gave everyone a snippet of this fabric, which I then obviously used for my backing:

Then my rules were simple: make a 8.5″ Ohio star block with colors that went with the snippet of fabric.  I gave freedom with the Ohio star block  – they could use however many fabrics they wanted, make hollow stars, make complete stars, have different colored points, whatever.  And the result was perfect!

I put all the darkish blocks in the quilt above, measuring 72″ x 80″, and put together 30 of the lighter blocks into a baby quilt for my husband’s cousin’s new addition:

Sorry for the bad picture – pre-digital age.  This baby quilt measures 40″x48″.

I actually still think I have some blocks left in an odds and ends pile.

Finally, this quilt was quilted by my mom – That Quilter – who is a professional long-arm quilter in Houston whom I have the great luck of being related to!

And don’t forget to go and check out all the other great quilts out there — there are just some AWESOME quilt artists about.  I always become a regular reader of at least a couple quilters each time this Festival comes around.  Click this button to get to all the rest:

Now excuse me while I go back to looking at all the pictures of my baby eating my quilt! Awwww….