Quilts Around the World: Anders' Charity Finish; Go Forth & Visit Wendy & Kerry!

Design Wall: Works In Progress

Ah, Monday morning, once again!  Are we tired of seeing my design wall yet?  I'm linking up with Design Wall Monday over at Patchwork Times and with Anything Goes Monday at Stitch By Stitch.  No progress on my bear paws and sawtooth stars, but I did finish another of my paper pieced pineapple log cabin blocks.  That makes 8 blocks complete, 28 more to go if I want the quilt to finish large enough for a California King.  I've also been working on some petals for more Frankenwhiggish Rose applique blocks, too, but I'm not going to show them to you because they look just like the finished block you already saw.  Boring, right? 

You know, this makes me wonder about how blogging might affect the creative process of quilting.  Do we feel pressure to come up with new content on a regular basis, and does that encourage shortcuts and simplifications just to get to that "finished" post?  Do we create more sampler and medallion quilts so that we can have a new block design to share each week or each month?  Do we opt for a straight line grid quilted with the walking foot because that's what we think is best for the quilt, or because it's a fast finish and we want to debut a new project on the blog?  Well, I'm nowhere near a quilt finish so if I run out of things to say about what I'm working on, this might morph into a Laundry Blog.  You have all been forewarned!
 

So, remember over the summer when I got this great idea that my son and I should go to one of our church's quilt guild meetings and help make quilts for Lutheran World Relief?  Anders worked hard to make his fabric "squares" meet up at the seams and he was disappointed that the donated fabrics he got to choose from were not very exciting, but he finally finished the quilt top just before school started and the ladies in the quilt guild layered it with batting, tied it and bound it to finish it off.  Yesterday we had the Blessing of the Quilts at church, and they were hanging on display all over the sanctuary so I was able to get a picture of Anders standing behind his quilt after the service.  I was zooming in from far away so the resolution is terrible, but here's Anders with the finished quilt:

Anders with his Charity Quilt for Lutheran World Relief

I wish I had known ahead of time that the quilts would be hanging up today -- I would have asked Bernie to bring his fancy schmancy camera and then we would have gotten a better picture!

 

But one thing I DO know ahead of time is that two of my favorite quilting bloggers, Wendy Sheppard of Ivory Springs and Kerry of Simple Bird Applique, will be blogging about their respective creative processes today because I tagged them for the Around the World Blog Tour.  I selected Wendy and Kerry because I've admired them both for their technical mastery and beautiful quilt desgns, but often wondered how they and other quilters who quilt for a living keep their creative juices flowing, deadline after deadline, always with fresh new ideas.  Wendy is a quilt designer whose work has been on the covers of so many magazines that she must have lost count by now, and Kerry designs and stitches the most beautifully intricate traditional applique patterns.  Both Kerry and Wendy teach quilting as well, and they each have fantastic blogs with excellent tutorials on applique and free-motion quilting with domestic sewing machines.  Please pop over to visit them when you have a moment, and tell them Rebecca sent you.  ;-)

Have a wonderful Monday, everyone!