All the right stars have aligned today and I can finally catch up on some quilt related projects – including writing about them. Lots of blog worthy events have happened in the past several weeks; things like finishing The Princess (woot! woot!), giving a trunk show to a local guild, a day trip to Grand Rapids for the AQS show, and quilt challenge reveals. Let’s jump right in…

Yes, the quilt that has lived on my design wall for at least 4 years is finished. In the final days of working on The Princess a looseness came over the process that I loved. In fact, that “letting go” is probably what saved the quilt for me. I had been paralyzed with indecision before starting the actual quilting but once I got going it seemed to fall into place – with a couple of exceptions. Stitches were ripped out but there were some things that just couldn’t be changed, no matter how much I wished differently. For a period of time I resigned myself to considering the quilt a learning experience. Big sigh. Then, after being sad about it for a while I decided to lean into it…if whimsical curlycues were on the dress fabric and quilted onto the face, why not incorporate them as an exaggerated design feature? Why not play with the lace, really overstitching it and (gasp) slathering some paint on too? I can’t tell you how much fun that was. When all was said and done I fell in love with my princess all over again.

Two quilt challenges have come and gone since the last time we caught up on them. For the Famous Artist challenge, Candace was inspired by Henri Matisse’s gouache on paper Cut-Outs.

This past week we gathered to reveal the results of The Abode challenge. Candace, Brenda, and Allison brought their quilts to show and Brenda also passed on the communal fabric piece that’s being altered in some way by each of us. In a few months that fabric will be divided into pieces for individual quilt making and we’ll see what we can do with it. 🙂

Candace Winiarski

Brenda Koepf

Allison Lerg

While mulling over ideas for the next themed challenge (Footwear), I couldn’t pass up a fun opportunity to view great quilts on display in Grand Rapids. The AQS show is in full swing this weekend and along with my buddies, Jill and Candace, I road tripped on over for the inspiration and creative renewal (okay, shopping and eating, too). 🙂

I’m sharing some of my favorites from the show here. Surprisingly (to me), I’m finding that I’m loving the modern quilts more and more. The colors, the designs, the artistry…ahh! I’ll start with this daisy confection entitled Moonflower by Molly Hamilton-McNally. (Note: I have cropped edges on these photos and thus am not giving representations of the full quilts).