What a Quilt Wants

It has been such a joy to participate in the Cheer Circle of do. Good Stitches for the past two years.  I love seeing the creativity of the other quilters and stitchers in our group.  I just wanted to take a minute to share my Cheer quilt from October that I finally (almost) finished. I love the bright, random colors.

 

 



It took awhile to figure out how to quilt this one.  At first,  I thought I would do organic, straight(ish) lines.  But, the darn quilt wasn't cooperating.  Or maybe I wasn't cooperating with the quilt?  Whichever way it was going, it just wasn't working for me.  Or the quilt. 

What the quilt really wanted was to be hand stitched.  I balked.  Too time consuming.  Too aggravating. I have to buy more pearl cotton. Wait, shopping?  Okay, that one's not so bad.  But still. Hand stitching?

 






Really, I love hand stitching.  I love the rhythm of it, the meditative quality, the simple pleasure.  But. It does take more time than machine quilting. Still, the quilt was begging.  So, I finally caved.  In this case, it was totally worth it.  I am really, really happy with how this quilt turned out. Now, it's ready to be bound and sent off to Project Linus and into the hands of a totally deserving kid.

I'm so happy that April is my turn to quilt again!  These are my blocks so far:




So exciting! Those deep, saturated greens mixed with the low volume prints that are so versatile, just make me happy today.  The colors scream SPRING!.  And I am so ready for that.