Quilting

I don't believed that I've ever mentioned, on this blog, that I am a quilter.

Or that I was.

And am trying to be, again.

I started quilting when living in northern Canada in 2000. It was cold! I needed an indoor craft activity!

I became a quilting enthusiast pretty quickly and carried on until 2004 or so, when I went to graduate school. I had a variety of grand plans to pick up this hobby again when I graduated in 2007, but it has taken me almost 4 years to get to that point. Graduate school recovery is intense!

The last quilt I made was in the summer of 2004 and now, six and a half years later (!) I am getting started again. With a vengeance. I currently have 4 projects on the go. Yikes!

Two of the projects are fairly small and well underway. I may blog about them when they are done. The two other projects are the result of a monthly block club I have joined. The group is called "Yours, Mine and Ours", and we will each be making 2 star blocks a month, one for ourselves and one for a charity quilt. We started January off with the Ohio Star.

I will be using my stars to complete a quilt that I started way back in *gulp* 2001. I have a large broken star that is surrounded by sashing and a pinwheel border that will be the centre block of a queen sized quilt.

Can you believe that this has been sitting in my closet for 10 years?

I had always intended to do a sampler border, but did not wants stars (how boring, I'd thought) and couldn't figure out what else to do. But now, having started the block of the month club (where we will only sew stars), I see that they will be perfect.

I am not sure if the fabric will be perfect though. I like it, but I think my taste has matured a bit since 2001. Oh well.

My Ohio Star

For the charity quilt, we could pick whatever materials we wanted - all new and perfectly coordinated or just a scrappy mishmash. I decided to take the middle road and shopped from my own fabric supply to find a stack of blues and whites.

I love how this colour combination turned out. There is nothing more classic than blue and white. I really want to keep this block for myself. But, I won't.

My charity Ohio Star

I am looking forward to finding out what we will be making for February and, in the meantime, I have my other two projects to keep me busy. It's good to be back!