Spring Bloggers' Quilt Festival 2012

Yea!  It is spring Bloggers' Quilt Festival time.  This is such a fun event out in blogger land, hosted by Amy Ellis from Amy's Creative Side

"Hello" to all of you fellow bloggers participating in the festival and visiting my blog, I love visiting your blogs and reading about your quilts.   This is my second year participating.  There was really no decision in which quilt I would share, it would be the States Quilt.

I made the States Quilt with my Mom.   My mother has early dementia/Alzheimer's and last summer she and my Dad moved into assisted living.  Because her sewing machine was becoming increasingly difficult for her to operate the decision was made not to move it with them. She was also struggling with knitting and hand quilting, but I noticed she was doing some hand embroidery on dish towels etc.  I had seen this quilt with the 50 states embroidered and an idea was born. 


She was very excited to work on this quilt together.  I would trace the embroidery patterns in colored Pigma Pens so she would know what colors to embroider the state outlines, birds, and flowers and then because they live in another state I would mail 5 or 6 blocks at a time to her.  We continued in this fashion over the fall and winter, in the mean time I worked on star applique blocks and came up with the center eagle block. 

By the end of winter I was starting to sew the blocks together.  I must say I was not  thinking ahead when I choose a pattern with hexagon blocks...LOTS of set in seams. 

I machine quilted the States quilt on my home sewing machine.

 This past April I was able to bring the finished quilt back to my Mom, she was thrilled to see it completed and she enjoys showing it to her many new friends at the assisted living center.   

Happy Stitching All,
Cheri