Bloggers Quilt Festival Group Quilt Entry

I'm excited that the Bloggers Quilt Festival is here! It's like strolling through a local quilt show from the comfort of your comfy chair!

My entry for the festival is a Group Quilt created with many, many hands from our local quilting guild, The Five Bee Quilters Guild.

Our small group of 40 is just two years old, and we are trying to support local charities through the making and giving of quilts. Oh, and pillowcases, too. The past two years we've sewn more than 400 pillowcases that were given to campers at Camp Rainbow Gold, a summer camp for children of all ages with cancer of all types. They get to use the pillowcase at camp and then have a tangible souvenir of their experience. Huge smiles abound when the kids see what type of pillowcase they've been given!

One of our members designed the quilt, another did some design work for the appliques and did a wonderful job hand appliqueing the focal blocks. Yours truly did the quilting. The block with the fisherman and the mountain in the background is actually Bald Mountain, or Baldy as skiers call it, and has some of the best skiing in the country!

The outdoor theme of the quilt was decided upon to be representative of the area in which we live, and so we've called the quilt, "Colors of Sun Valley". 

There's wildlife (don't feed the bears!)

And more wildlife
On a side note, a mama moose and her twin teenagers decided hanging out in residents' backyards was a pretty good way to go this late summer/fall, especially after a huge forest fire devastated the habitat for big game animals such as these.  It's been fun hearing reports of where this moose family has been spotted. Seems they've been especially fond of fruit trees.

And a mountain experience isn't complete without a  snowy cabin.

This is a king-sized quilt made from batiks and measures 118" square.  There's even enough room to tuck your pillows inside!  The Swoon Blocks are quite large, but I forgot to measure them.

Here's a close-up of some of the custom quilting I did, but unfortunately it doesn't show up too well. We used a variegated thread, which turned  out quite nicely and complemented the colors throughout the quilt.

We tried to count how many hours of labor went into this quilt. But then decided that the hours really didn't matter. It was more a matter of love that drives each of us to quilt. Plus we got to know one another better through the process!

This quilt is being raffled off in December and hopefully we'll not only get enough money to pay for the materials, but to continue to help the kids at Camp Rainbow Gold, and help a struggling single mom care for her family through The Advocates program, or contribute to the hospital auxiliary's fund with philanthropy quilts. Turns out we're a little better sewists and quilters than we are raffle ticket salesmen and we haven't been hitting the pavement as hard as we should.  So if you have any interest in buying a ticket, just let me know. Your chances of winning are probably fairly good!

It's been fun seeing all the great quilt projects this year in the Bloggers Quilt Festival. Be sure to check them all out!

Remember to quilt with a smile,
Barb