Four Seasons Quilt Swap - Received

I've been monitoring the mail ever since the mailing deadline for the Four Seasons Quilt Swap, and Ben surprised me when he picked my up yesterday by bringing along a package that looked like it might be my quilt. Sure enough, it was.

Isn't this quilt absolutely gorgeous? It was made by Jeanne Mitchell of Perry, Oklahoma. Inspired by what she says are the only flowers she can get to grow: her purple coneflowers. It's almost as if she knew that purple coneflowers are my favorite flower and if I could, I'd have a whole field full of them.

I love the colors and they definitely make me think of summer. And it's handquilted. Some day I might get brave enough to try that.



I've hung the quilt in a place where I can see it regularly, and where I often find that I could use a bit of an uplift: in my cubicle at work. Jeanne also included a CD of summer songs to which I look forward to listening.

Really, this swap was a ton of fun and I would definitely do another one. I heard from Margaret, who organized this one, that she won't be doing one in the fall (I can totally understand how life gets busy), so I'll have to look for another option.

Four Seasons Swap - Finished

My quilt is now in the mail to Oregon and seeing as I don't think my recipient reads my blog, I thought I'd share with you photos of my finished project. As you might recall, the swap rules are pretty simple: a quilt between 16 and 20 inches square, with a "summer" theme. You can pretty much go anywhere you might like with it.

I settled on ice cream, as you probably already knew. Here's the finished view:


I'd originally wanted to do an ice cream truck and some music like Pop, Goes the Weasel!, but when I realized the actual size I'd be working in, I didn't think I had the skill to pull off something that detailed in the relatively limited amount of space. So, I went pretty basic.

I'm not sure how I feel about it; it's really my first original design effort, other than a small quilt I made for the guild's coffee cup challenge a few years ago. I was inspired by advertising for ice cream in general (do a Google image search on some particular products, like "ice cream sandwich" or "ice cream bar" and you'll see what I mean) and wanted to make it fun and bright.

Now, I don't generally do a lot of applique, so this is a bit of a departure and a challenge. I did my best - downloaded a fun font from online called Heartbreaker (I think this is the one!), used it to type out the words for the quilt at the right size, printed it out, cut the letters apart and taped them back together so I could get the desired level of "overlappingness."



I had fun quilting the cone to really look like a cone. And I sewed bugle beads on the top scoop to look like sprinkles. Not being experienced in beading, I hope that they stay on. Had a few miscues with beading needles and such, but they do seem to be well affixed. Ben helped me a bit with drawings of ice cream sandwiches and cones. Thanks a million, honey!

This was a fun challenge, but I must say I'm relieved to have it finished and in the mail. I waited to the last minute yet again, and this caused more than a bit of stress. I'll certainly be checking my own mail in the coming days to see what fun quilt I might receive. I still need to upload my images to Flickr with tags for the group, but will do so soon. You can search on the "4sqssum08" tag to find those images already there. Quite an inspiring group; very interesting to see how many directions the theme can lead.

Now it's time to get started on a major project that has a mid-September deadline.

Four Seasons Quilt Swap - Sneak Peak

Yes, I finally began the process of moving from idea to reality for my Four Seasons Quilt Swap. Time is running out and I still have a good amount to go, but I am also showing this picture of the quilt where it stood somewhat earlier in the course of the day than when I left off last evening. Betcha can't guess what my main topic might be? I'm not sure I'll give many more sneak peaks because anything more will give a lot away. Gotta have this done and in the mail by two weeks from Thursday. I do think this will be doable, although I will be putting in some significant hours very soon.

Haven't done a whole lot of sewing over the past week because we had to take care of all of the cherries that we picked while we were in Ohio. Free cherries off my Grandma's tree. How perfect! Cherry jam is my favorite - second only to raspberry! But I have learned the important lesson that 5 gallons of unpitted cherries is a LOT of cherries. A one gallon tub stuffed to the top with the lid on is enough - pretty much exactly - to make a double batch of jam. Three double-batches and 39 jars of cherry jam later, and we were pooped. And still had 2 gallons of cherries to deal with! We opted to pit them, add sugar, and bag them for the freezer so we can enjoy them over the course of the winter. If anyone has any good recipes for sour cherries, I'd love to hear about them!

Probably not too much quilting this week as we're hosting a small All-Star Game party tomorrow night. My favorite player - Corey Hart - was voted in as the final player. Don't ask how many times I voted (I couldn't actually tell you, but it was a lot!). We also had fun this past weekend going to two games between the Brewers and the Reds. It's getting really tough for me to go to those games - I can't root against the Reds, but I want to root for the Brewers because they need to keep up with the evil Cubs and Cardinals. Unfortunately, the Brewers lost both of the games we went to and I still didn't see Ken Griffey, Jr. hit a home run (although I did see Adam Dunn hit two in one game).

Four Seasons Quilt Swap

Inspired by my participation in our local round robin exchange, I signed up for and got into my first quilt swap. I'd read about the Four Seasons Quilt Swap on a couple of blogs that I read regularly, and it looked like they had a good time creating and receiving quilts from some individual they'd never met. And this would be a new way for me to challenge myself as a quilter and to grow as well.

The scale is small - between 16 and 20 inches square, and the deadline is the end of July, so I figure this is doable. The quilt has to represent summer in some way. Other rules, if you're interested in what is going into this, are here.

I received the information about my recipient earlier this week and have had some fun this morning looking over her blog to get a sense of her tastes and what she might like. The quilt has to represent some aspect of the season of summer. I have some ideas, but I'm curious: what does "summer" mean to you? Stay posted for progress updates and sneak peaks.