One of the blogs that I started following early on was Humble Quilts. For the past few years, in April, she has hosted a doll quilt exchange. This is the first doll quilt I made.
I agonized over it. It was 2015 and Mom had just died and I thought this would be a great distraction for me. But of course when I am stressed, I tend to over think things. There are few requirements, size and civil war era fabric. But I hadn’t done much with civil war era fabrics yet at this time so how do I know if a certain fabric qualifies? Especially when I only wanted a fat quarter of it, but the salvage didn’t have a label. And those that did, didn’t always give an indication of time period. Stress. Also, I am making this for someone else, that I don’t know, so I want it to be perfect. I found a block that would have been fitting for the time period and started making basket blocks. Didn’t use a pattern so then had to figure out setting triangles, hand or machine quilt (I did hand quilting) and continued to agonize over its worthiness. In the end, I was very happy with how it turned out. Happy enough that I signed up to do it again the next year.
I love bowties!! This was a joy to make and wish I had made one for myself at the same time. No worries, again hand quilted, done on time, and had fun playing with colors, placement, and every step of the process. So once again, I signed up to participate the next year.
2017 was a busier spring so was a little more stressful and had a few more issues getting it all put together and in the mail on time. Still happy with the end result, but I think I want to go back to bowties. I believe the exchange has become so popular that in 2018, by the time I got to Lori’s blog to sign up, her roster was full and I couldn’t participate in her exchange. So Kim Allen and I decided to do our own exchange, a little later…
This is part of a Kim Diehl pattern. This time I actually made myself one at the same time! Although mine has yet to be quilted… Many thanks to Lori for hosting such a wonderful quilt exchange. There are so many gracious, talented quilters that participate. I’m glad I have had the opportunity to participate.
Bowtiesnstars 