My Quilt in the Blogger's Quilt Festival

The bi-annual Bloggers' Quilt Festival for Fall, 2011, runs from  October 28 and through November 4. The event is a reason to share and talk about a favorite quilt, even if it's one that's been seen chatted up in a previous blog post.

I'm taking this opportunity to talk again about "Snowflake Medallion" a quilt I finished in June of this year. It's very special to me, for several reasons.

Photo by Craig Anderson Photography

"Snowflake Medallion" is a pattern I purchased while in Australia, visiting our daughter who at the time lived in Sydney. I adore Sydney, and actually know it better than I know our capital city! If I ever win the lottery, this is where you'll find me... permanently.

In May of 2009, Dan and I flew from Sydney to Melbourne. We rented a car, and I'm the one who drove us around Victoria for seven days since left-side-of-the-road driving was more than he could handle. We stopped at several quilt shops, but mostly ogled the beauty of Australia's southern coast. It's simply astounding. Whenever I close my eyes to recollect a favorite view, I envision the beautiful day when we were blessed to see the "Twelve Apostles." Much like the overwhelming majesty of the US Grand Canyon, Australia's coastline is the most ruggedly beautiful scenery I've seen. (Doubtful Sound on the south island of New Zealand is another.)

We spent a night in Ballarat, Victoria. That's when I visited Ballarat Patchwork and met the young proprietor, Emma. Her shop is filled with modern fabrics and bright, fresh quilt designs that, at the time, were quite new to me. One of her quilts captured my attention: "Snowflake Medallion." It's the pattern I returned home with, determined to make.

Emma's "Snowflake Medallion"

Fabrics for my Snowflake were purchased here in Des Moines, but in my mind it's still a 100 percent Aussie quilt. Another reason that Snowflake is a favorite quilt is that I hand-appliqued mine while my Sydney friend, Di, was doing the same with her own Snowflake Medallion quilt. She's also the clever person who came up with an ingenious method for hand-appliqueing teeny, precise 1 mm circles, using sequins as "templates"!

After completing the 78" X 78" quilt top, I pin-basted it, and let it languish for a year before I finally put my mind to quilting it. Quilting isn't my favorite thing to do. That's not because I can't do it, but because I always struggle with what to quilt. Designing quilt patterns isn't my forte. Still, I put my best efforts into Snowflake, at one point using a pizza pan as a template for the large, scalloped feather circle feature in the center of the quilt. Many hours were spent, sit-down free motion machine quilting to make this quilt as special as I could.

quilted using very pale green Sulky thread

from the back

I entered Snowflake in our 2011 Iowa State Fair and was extremely gratified to win a blue ribbon, my first ever Iowa State Fair first place ribbon in at least 15 years of entering quilts in the fair! Stiff competition there.

Then, in October I was again honored to learn that Snowflake was accepted into the juried Pacific International Quilt Festival in Santa Clara, California. Snowflake didn't earn a ribbon, but I still consider it a supreme honor to have had it displayed alongside quilts created by extremely talented, celebrity quilters.

More importantly for me though was receiving, for the first time in my 30 years of quiltmaking, an honest and thorough judge's appraisal of my work. To be perfectly honest, I have room for quilting improvement. Still, my journey with this quilt - from Australia to Iowa to California and back to Iowa - has been one I wouldn't trade for any amount of kudos or prize money.

Go to this Flickr site to see all the bloggers' quilts in this fall festival. Inspiration awaits! Linda