Oregon Trail, Finished Top.

ScienceMel asked last week if I had ever finished the Oregon Trail quilt. I never got around to posting pictures, but I did finish the top. I have plans to hand quilt this one, so it's in the To-Do stack right now. 

I put the log cabin blocks in the four corners of the quilt, to help complete the border.

For the rest of the blocks, I divided them into two piles - one pile was put on point with neutral settings. The other pile was put on point with strips. After that I just alternated simple settings with the strips, in no particular order. Looking forward to when I have a few spare months to quilt it. Between the neutral settings and the strips I should have some great areas to play around in. :)

My Wedding Quilt - For Bloggers' Quilt Festival

Hooray! It's Bloggers' Quilt Festival time again!

This time I'd like to share a quilt that's very special to me - My wedding quilt.

Basic Info
The quilt is about 90" x 100", a total of 110 log cabin blocks. The blocks were machine pieced, then I hand embroidered a heart in the center of each block, and hand quilted the quilt. From start to finish the quilt took me 3 1/2 years.

The hearts:

Some detail of the quilting:

The Story (Be warned, it's long.)
I spent a three month internship at Aspen Music Festival, hundreds of miles away from my boyfriend (now husband). We had spent the previous year of our courtship in different cities and each weekend one of us would travel 250 miles to see the other. Since Aspen was so much farther away, we didn't have that luxury during the summer. Because I was alone, at a music internship, I spent a lot of time going to concerts.

One evening at a concert, an elderly woman sat in her seat next to me, immediately leaned over and said, "I hope it doesn't bother you, but I'm going to be quilting through the concert." Both being quilters, we proceed to chat about quilting until the concert began. She was hand-piecing a log cabin block, and she explained that she only worked on the blocks by hand, during the summer, at the Festival. Consequently, she still figured it would be a few more years before the quilt was finished. After that evening I thought to myself that I should really make a log cabin quilt someday.

The next weekend, the featured work on the evening concert was Appalachian Spring by Aaron Copland. I had talked to that concert's conductor, Leonard Slatkin, earlier in the week for an interview, and he had waxed poetic about the story line of the piece - a newlywed couple celebrating their marriage against the backdrop of the community building a house - and the beautiful optimism that he saw in it. The piece is an amazing composition that I've always enjoyed, but it took on new meaning to me that night as I thought about my life. Against this work of optimism, love, and community, I realized that I wanted to build a future with my honey.

So, the next day I started planning out the quilt, and I began it shortly thereafter. That winter we were engaged, and I worked on the quilt with more devotion, but my desire to hand-quilt it took much longer than I expected. Although my husband was not involved in the planning of the quilt, he was involved in the construction. He sewed some of the blocks together, and even added a few hand-quilted stiches to it. Friends were welcome to add a few stitches to the quilting, and many did. In the end, it was 16 months after the wedding when the quilt was finished. It is named Simple Gifts, after the Shaker melody that is used so predominately in Appalachian Spring:

Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free
'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.

Thanks for listening to my story! Head over to the Bloggers' Quilt Festival, see some more great quilts, and add your own!

Woven Fabric.

This is the first kit where I replaced one of the fabrics. The middle blue was supposed to be a blue and white floral print, but once it was in the smallest square (which measures 1 inch), it just looked a little too busy and uneven. So I replaced it with a simple patterned blue.

I think it keeps with the simple block styles a little better. And I'm sure I'll get to use that swatch of blue flowers in another project soon enough. :)

Quilting Goals? What Quilting Goals?

So, I just looked at the calendar and realized that it's already March. 1/6th of the year has already passed us by! And I never posted my quilting goals for the year! Rubbish!

1. Finish my wedding quilt.
2. Quilt for my niece Leila.
3. Finish the squares from last year's zodiac quilt. Possibly even put them together.
4. I'm loving this year's Japanese-inspired quilt, so I definitely want to get the top finished, and have the quilting started by the end of the year.
5. I picked up a quilt kit last month (my first!), and I think it might look very striking in my bedroom. So I want to get the top finished this year. I think I'll probably send it out to be machine quilted, instead of hand quilting it. But I reserve the right to change my mind. :)

There! Five quilting goals for the new year, and ten months to finish them. Take that, motivation!

Blue Checkerboard.

I've always loved squares set on point. Lots of squares set on point is even better. :)

Blue Fence Rails...Almost.

This month's block is very similar to a Rail Fence pattern:

Just using two contrasting colors, instead of three gradated colors. Just think what a great pattern would emerge if you just repeated this block over and over again.

Blue Balance

Here's the second block of the Japanese Block of the Month:

Isn't that lovely? Yes, definitely already loving this year's blocks.