Project Hope blocks completed!

   Every year Katie makes a couple of quilts for Project Hope. She gathers a number of friends to make blocks on a theme. She pulls out her stash and adds to it. This year, the theme is farm animals.

Click to enlarge.

    Each person (not all are quilters) volunteers to make a 12 1/2"square block...and others make more. Some exercise great imagination in building the blocks, making them interactive. Others crochet their own drawings. Katie gathers the blocks during the summer, joins them with strips (sashing) and adds borders. batting, and backing to prepare the creations to be quilted. In the Fall, after the quilts are put together, it is exhilerating to see how different and exciting people's work can be.

     I usually volunteer to make about 8 or 9 blocks.  It is my nature to do something quickly. So my pieces may not be the most interesting, but they blend in to add to the quantity needed.  This year I found a print at Quilting by the Yard in Vernon CT on the way to NYC. With it, I broke my former time records.  If you type "Project Hope" into the Search area above (top left by the orange B icon), you can see earlier posts for Project Hope.
    

In the Beginning...a Journal quilt

     When the Journal Quilt Connection met, they decided to let each member choose a theme for a month of the year for members to quilt. We decided to start in July, and members pointed at me to choose a theme. I said, "That is my birthday month." "We'll do 'birthdays' then...birthdays apply to lots of things: people, nations." Later I suggested "beginnings" to avoid cliche.

       Although the "Beginnings" theme starts in July, this is my third in June. I seem to compulsively enjoy making one a week. This too will pass, I feel certain.

In the Beginning...

        Joe and I went to New York City this weekend where I always get so many ideas, I hardly know where to start. We get our Metro Card and hop on and off the buses and trains at museums, book and crafting areas. This weekend we hit the Morgan, the Folk Museum, the Jewish Museum, the Met and MOMA, and Montclair Art Museum on the way home. I also got to The City Quilter 3 times and the beading area on 6th Avenue near the New York Public Library. The Strand and the book store in Grand Central were not missed either. Plus, I discovered near Rein's Deli, on the drive down, another fabulous quilting store where I got the pencils. It is Quilting by the Yard on the Hartford Turnpike, in Vernon CT.
        I think this pinwheel journal quilt with no area to rest the eye shows the exhaustion, chaos and excitement of searching out new ideas from books, places and art before I finally get to work in many new directions! In the beginning is chaos, stitched in the ditch, bordered and backed by the wrapped yellow brick road. The dots are my brain and the subway lines you see as well if you click to enlarge.