Wandering Quilt – Nicole’s – I.am.blessed

Just in case you are not familiar with traveling quilts here is the idea: Each member of your group creates a starter block and usually writes a journal with details, theme and style they would like their quilt to end up. You send your starter block to another member in your group (usually there is a list, and you send it to the next lady on the list), they have a month to add on to your starter block and get your quilt going. Then, they send it to the next woman on the list and so on and so on until your quilt arrives back to you. In the meantime, as your quilt is traveling to each member of your group, their quilts are as well, so you will be adding to their quilts.

We have 10 women in our group. That means that 9 ladies besides me will be working on my quilt and I will be working on 9 different quilts. All themed.

Our group runs January 2017 – October 2017.

View all my ‘Wandering Quilt’ posts here.

July’s Wandering quilt arrived.  This one belongs to Nicole, who is pretty amazing and obsessed with color.  Like rainbows.  So along with rainbows, this quilt is also about the ocean.

You’ll notice the mermaid, the sea turtles in the corner, also all the fussy cuts feature sea life.

I am particularly fond of that little scallop border.  But the triangles just past the border, I also found to be a really cool addition to a medallion quilt (which this quilt most definitely is).

Here is a closeup of those clam shells.  I don’t know about you, but I could go for a whole quilt of those.  It’s on the bucket list in case you are wondering.

Speaking of the bucket list, I need to keep a page dedicated to what those quilts are, don’t you think?  Then cross them off when I make them.  How else would one keep up with their bucket list of quilt making?  If you have any thoughts on the subject, please leave a comment.

At first I was worried about this quilt, but it didn’t take me too long to come up with an idea.

Nicole swims in open water several times a week or every day, I don’t know which, but she does these long distance swims in the ocean (she also has some cool pics of it, if you check out her feed), and she gets joy from this, so I knew going in that I’d like to put something to that effect in words on the quilt.  I went with, “Let the sea set you free”, since it was on her pinterest board.

When I looked at the quilt, full of color, I thought it would look nice if it had a little break from color for the eyes.  So I thought I’d go with a low volume round, but have pebbles needle turn appliqued here and there.  I put the words in the corner.

When the next lady adds to it, it will be more color more than likely.  I did run this idea by Nicole, just to be sure.  My low volume loving heart loved this idea, but I needed to check with her color loving one.  She  loved the idea, so I’m ready to get started on this.

I was a little worried about how the black words would look next to all the color.  Black of course always looks good, but sometimes it pulls all the focus away from everything else.  I actually would have preferred to use a different color for the words, but Clover doesn’t seem to make many colors of the bias tape I needed for the words, so black it is.  They did have gold, but I just couldn’t picture it in gold, ya know?

So here is me starting this project.  I’ve only finished the three words so far, but I really need to get busy with this.  All those pebbles are going to take SO. MUCH. TIME. to get stitched down.

I plan on stitching them in sections, that way  I don’t have to carry the whole quilt all over the place with me, and then sew the sections together and then onto the quilt top.

What do you think of the black letters?