the Blogger's Quilt Festival.



It's 2 years since I first joined in with one of Amy's Festivals and I have to say, I can't believe how it's grown! Kudos to Amy for bringing us all together like this twice a year. It's nice for us lone wolf quilters to be part of something. So. To the quilt.

I joined a 3x6 Bee last summer (2010) with 6 other ladies from all over the world. The idea behind a 3x6 is that you make one design six times in six colour pallettes. The colours are chosen by the other participants. What this means for you is you receive 6 blocks that are different in design but are, hopefully, colour co-ordinated. Which is exactly what happened for me!

I had all my blocks by the new year and I puzzled for some months how to put them together. 6 12in blocks do not a big quilt make! So, I took my cue from my scrapping days when I had a real penchant for layouts (pages) with lots of white space.

This is my Mental quilt.

Half of the quilt is totally plain with just a teeny embellishment of squares in the top left corner border.

The backing is a lovely Timber print - it's wee sycamour helicopter seeds and is not too busy for such a plain front. The binding is also really simple, just a solid chocolate brown. It's had an all-over stipple quilting, too in an attempt to unify everything and add some interest to the plain parts. You cannae beat a crinkly quilt!

It happily lives in my bedroom so I see it every morning. The blocks came from Lynne and Mandy in Derbyshire, Enger-land, Susan in Gurnee, Illinois, Krista in Seattle, Washington, Lucinda in Morrisville, New York and the other Krista in Anchorage, Alaska. And me up here in Scotland. Although in the interests of the truth, Krista in Seattle's block is still waiting to be made into a matching cushion! And the name "the Mental quilt" is from the bee name. We were Bee Mental!!

This remains my only finished Bee quilt though and I am proud I managed to do something with those disparate blocks!