Favorite Quilt for Online Quilt Show

Perhaps you have heard about this online quilt festival being hosted by ParkCityGirl...go have a look!

As my readers and fellow swappers know, I am both a rabid quilter and a huge advocate for the children's charity Project Linus. I make generally over 20 quilts per year for this organization. These mostly utilise whatever scraps I have accumulated from my other quilting, swapping or sewing projects. Each year, however, the chapter in my area hosts a quilt show entitled the "Book-Blanket Challenge". Participants must select a children's book, and design a quilt around the story or a character in the story. The books & the quilts are given to children that stay in Barbara Bush Children's Hospital between Thanksgiving & New Years. It is a tremendous gesture, and I warm inside to think how the child who receives one of these must feel afterwards.

Generally, the non-Project Linus quilts I make are more design intensive, more intricately quilted, bettern coordinated colorwise, and more pleasing to me. But, this quilt's colors and simplicity make it a personal favorite. I had under a quarter of a yard of my polar bear feature fabric leftover from making a quilt for one of my sons. In a thrift store, I saw the book, "Big Bear, Little Bear", and I knew this was destined for my donation (the book was in pristine condition!).

The book is in the most gorgeous shades of turquoises & blues, and white. I tried to match these colors carefully since they evoked the essence of the Arctic ideally. My design is simple: framed fussy-cut bear blocks, alternated with nine-patches, some straight set and some on point.

The crispness of this quilt is next to impossible to capture on photograph, especially after it was quilted, but it is both sweet & frosty at the same time. The fussy-cut bears are so totally adorable with a momma bear and a baby bear together. The blues selected remind me of ice, and ocean and sky.

The quilting is done in white and aqua rayon threads which add a light shimmer. The white rayon makes the white Kona resemble ice. Done on my home Singer machine, the quilting was terribly cumbersome for a quilt this size (never again I say!). Plus I figured I used three-quarters of a MILE of thread in the quilting alone.

My quilt did win this Book-Blanket challenge (2nd year in a row for me), and the kind ladies at the local quilt shop still remind me how much they loved it. I hope I am as in love with my craft in 25 years as they are!

I wish I knew which child received this, if only so that they could know how very much I loved making it for them. It has a part of my heart sewn into it.