Serendipity...

I decided to call the block swap quilt "Serendipitous Journey". That is sort of how this whole project has been, full of surprises from beginning to end. It started because I watched an episode of "Simply Quilts" where a group of ladies do this annually. I threw the idea out there and some friends responded. We voted on the color choices and the block pattern to use. Then they sent them all to me and I divvied them out. It was fun to see each person's take on the colors and the blocks. Some of the blocks were a little smaller than others so that presented a challenge. Amanda's quilt turned out so pretty and that was a fun thing to see how she put hers together. I decided to paper piece mine to a bigger block size to disguise the smaller blocks. So there is randomness there, as well as random angles that I set the blocks at when I paper pieced them. I was really not terribly inspired to finish it until I read a note from the mother of an FA patient who sent a donation to FARA for the quilt drawing. She was late and missed the drawing because her daughter was having surgery to correct her scoliosis, but as I read her note, I felt inspired to do something for her. I was trying to think of something to do, if I had a project that I could finish up for her and realized I had the block swap quilt. All it needed was borders, batting, backing, quilting and binding. Then I realized that it contained pieces of fabric that were leftovers from the quilt that I made for my niece, Allison when she had her scoliosis surgery a year and a half ago. It just seemed perfect. And finally, the recipient has no idea that this quilt will soon be coming in the mail to them.

Serendipity....

Redwork and Mail...

First of all, I received this in the mail today from my sweet friend Amanda.

Amanda and I have been friends for around 10 years now and I am honored to have won this bag from her. I have seen her grow and develop as a quilter from those first days when she was expecting her oldest child and made her first quilt, to the talented quilt artist that she has become. I am so blessed to have such a dear friend. This bag is a work of art and I will cherish it! I love the colors in it, something about it reminds me of chocolate covered cherries, or those chocolate truffles with the pink cream centers. You know the ones I am talking about?

Amanda is doing a quilt-a-long on her blog (see left hand side bar for a link). I joined hesitantly because I don't really feel like I have much of a stash to draw from. Most of my fabrics are ok on their own, but don't really go with much of anything else in my stash. SOOO I went and bought these.

I had been thinking about doing a redwork quilt because I had a set of these that I bought several years ago and never embroidered up.

I decided to do them as redwork embroidery. So, in a way I AM using something I already had on hand. I hope to combine the two sets of blocks into a quilt top when I get them all done. I'll have 12 of each, so I should have a good sized quilt when I am done. I am really trying to break out of that "I can only do a lap size" mentality. LOL We will see how it goes...

And just a quick word of thanks to Sew Mama Sew, they again linked to the kids clothes tutorials again yesterday in their "handmade for the holidays" series. They have been linking lots of fun tutorials for all sorts of things this month.