Blogger's Quilt Festival

The Fabric: Much of the fabric in this quilt was given to my Mom and me from a Vietnam veteran. His wife had a stroke many years prior to her death. After the stroke, quilting became her therapy. Much of the seven cartons of fabric we received was then donated to the Iowa Home of the Brave Project, a VA hospital auxiliary unit, and to our local guild.

The Pattern: I've always loved the movement and life of wonky and improvisational quilts. I've been making scrap quilts in this style for over ten years. I have a lot of respect for Denyse Schmidt's influence on modern quilters, but I have little time for templates or complicated instructions--the women of Gee's Bend certainly didn't need a pattern. I've been planning on making a tutorial for how I like to do wonky blocks and log cabins.

The Quilt: I made this quilt for myself just before I left Iowa for Graduate School in Syracuse, New York. I usually just make quilts and then figure out who they are intended for; thus, I rarely make quilts for myself. My grad school experience only lasted a month--wrong place, wrong time, wrong program, wrong assistantship. I returned to Iowa last October and slept under this quilt all winter. When I moved to Colorado a month ago, it was nearly the only piece of bedding I brought with me. This quilt has become my one bit of normalcy in my unpredictable life. Before this quilt I'd never really used many solids in my quilts; however, I enjoyed creating texture without the help of patterns and I despise tone-on-tone prints (i.e. Moda Marbles or Splash by Blank Quilting).

The Quilting: I did a freehand overall meander. I like doing tight meandering then washing the snot out of the quilt so that it crinkles along the stitching giving the quilt more texture.

Want to see more? Check out this link to see more quilts and their stories.