Spring quilt Festival

Ok I am going to get my post done now so I don't forget.Check out the side bar for more of the blogger quilt show.!  Here is one of my favorite quilts that I have made. I call it Susan's Vacations Interrupted.  I started out my quilting journey by buying a Rubbermaid tote of 2½" squares out of  all sorts of fabric at an Estate auction in a box of other fabrics. Some very thin and sheer, some poly cotton blends, but beautiful in their own way. I thought I want a Trip Around the World. Well not having a pattern in hand I just started after about 5 rounds I realized I was never going to have enough squares of one color to do what I wanted. Plan B had to start. Of course I had to get a plan B first. I had no quilting room (yet) and worked off a card table in the living room. I dug through the box of goodies I purchased at the auction and there was a stack of  9-patch blocks. OK now what oh oh I have a couple yards of this cream... now I spent days sorting out the little cut squares, putting all the like ones together and coordinating ones around them. I had to figure how many of each color, darks, light and such. This process went on for weeks maybe months all the while I started collecting quilting magazines researching quilting on the net. Graph paper became my friend and I started to draft out my new quilt, I made the mini trips connecting them all with the cream and interrupting them with the 9-patches.

I figure mini trips are my vacations and nothing I do goes off with out some sort of problem thus the interruptions. So the cream represents my path through life and all the mini trips are my journeys, with the 9-patches as all the obstacles I have endured along the way. This quilt has over 2200 pieces and I have to say one of my favorites. I gave this to my oldest son and sometimes wish I hadn't. I look at this and think of all the time and what it means to me and wish I still had it. but then reality hits and I realize every quilt I make has some sort of meaning to me and I can't keep them all so I let it go.  I do  borrow this one when I do trunk shows. I think how far have I really come from this first quilt (OK real close to being first) I still refuse to throw fabric away and will make a quilt out of anything. I still got to estate sales and buy up old fabric and blocks, no matter the condition or quality. (yes I do shop at my LQS too)  I do now have a dedicated room for sewing and I now cut with a rotary cutter. I own book after book but have never made a quilt from a pattern in them. I even have EQ6. Yes I have come a long way but when it comes down to it, I still love to draft out my patterns with my graph paper and stroke the fabric as I yay or nay it in the pattern process.