A quilt every few days or so #20

This is a quilt that is not finished - and will be someday - I promise! It is our "Going to Washington" quilt. We moved to Washington in March 2001 to be here so we could participate in the preparations for Beccy and Jason's wedding in October. I sewed Beccy's dress and we helped plan and put on the wedding along with Jason's family.

I wanted to make a quilt to commerate moving to Washington. I started sketching ideas and making blocks. As I tell about each block, it is not necessarily in the order that the blocks were made.

This block is the centerpiece of the quilt - it has Mt. Baker in the background, Lummi Island and Bellingham Bay. Again flying geese, this time in a circle - I do love making flying geese.


This is a map of the Bellingham area, copied from a map atlas book. I even used similar colors to what is in a map book. I will eventually mark where Bellingham is and perhaps the names of each of the San Juan Islands. It is in one piece - but I took two photos fo it to get good close ups of the islands.





One of the borders will be embroidered wild flowers from Washington - I look for photos of wild flowers, or real flowers and make sketches and then embroider them. I plan for this flower border to encircle the entire quilt . . .

Close up of some of the embroidered wild flowers . . .

Of course any Washington quilt must have bald eagles and I paper pieced two of them - then decided that I didn't care for the sharpness. So I removed all the blue and kept just the eagle part - and appliqued it to blue sky fabric.

I made two of them - and appliqued them to a dead tree. I tried four times to get the right look with dark fabric, finally turning a black fabric to the wrong side and using the grey color for the dead tree - it came out the perfect color.

This is a partial layout - just an idea of how I might start putting the blocks together. . .

Next I started making Mariner's Compass blocks . . .

Many of them . . .

Many patterns, many designs . . .

This is the largest one - and has over 100 pieces - the smallest piece is about 1/2" triangle . . .

Then I decided that I can't use the Mariner's Compasses because they are all on a white background - and what I want is for them to float around the center of the quilt, so I have to remake them with a blue background that matches the background of the eagle block. . .

Most of the MC blocks are from Judy Neimeyer's books - wonderful instructions and patterns . . .

I thought that a rope border would be perfect for the last border - and I fiddled with Drunkard's Patch blocks until I got them to come out looking like a rope. I had to elongate part of the block and shorten other parts.

Close up of the rope border . . .

There will be more blocks - as soon as I think of them - ideas of Washington . . .