A recent beautiful spring day was right for a ride-about. Not knowing our destination, I tossed a few small quilts in the car “just in case.”
When we stopped for our picnic lunch with this view of the sky and the trees, I was glad I had chosen to include Endless Migration, a challenge quilt from 2006. I had promised to write its details earlier when I did another post on paper foundation piecing here.
Our guild’s annual challenges always teach me something new. In 2006, our Challenge Queen, Tess, required that we do some curved piecing. As a rather new quilter, I thought about the possibilities all year (the challenge is announced in February, presented in November) but waited until nearly the last minute to engage in the sewing of my entry. If you know me, you know that this is a behavior in which I still engage…waiting until the last minute. Part of the reason is that I can’t keep a secret very long, so procrastination means I have less time to deal with that. But I don’t wait until the last minute to think about it…the whole intervening time between announcement and presentation, I have the challenge topic on my mind.
I loved the geometry of Mariner’s Compass blocks and had played with paper foundation piecing to accomplish a block or two of that type.
I wanted to create an oval ring of flying geese around a tree of life motif. I had a tree pattern I liked, enlarged it to a nice wall hanging size, then made the oval to fit it. I did not have an oval the right size – this was before Cindy Needham created her marvelous templates, so I drew the concentric ovals on freezer paper by using two thumbtacks and a string. I drew in the flying geese as well, and it was to the sewing machine.
I loved (and still love) Fossil Fern fabrics. I had bought a couple of sets of the complete range of colors in 3″ squares, so I arranged lighter ones to fit in the sky portion and darker ones in the earth portion of my landscape.
The tree is a batik fabric fused to the background. At this early stage of my machine quilting life, I only knew how to stipple. So that’s the quilting done with invisible thread, I think.
The guild’s current challenge topic is Something Feathered. I’ve already made three possible entries and I have another one brewing…they are to be shared in a couple of weeks since we couldn’t meet in November 2020…so I still have time to make another, right?
Oh, and our picnic destination was Dowdell’s Knob where FDR often visited when he visited the Little White House near Warm Springs. Here you see he is holding Endless Migration. Another quilt’s visit to this spot is documented here.
