31 Days - Day 9:Chickens

About ten or twelve years ago, I was part of what was then the World Wide Quilting Page boards. Wherever quilters meet, whether in person or in pixels, all sorts of fun things happen.

We organized group comfort and baby quilts (a few of those will show up in later posts, as I volunteered several times to do the final assembly and quilting). In 2003, we had a three day retreat just north of Niagara Falls.

Every so often, someone would organize a Round Robin. Round Robins in the quilting world are a bit like a round robin dinner: everyone has a part to play. A delightful young woman from Sweden organized the one I was part of - a first for both of us. All told, there were nine quilters from three different countries and four different states.

We each made a center for our quilt. We passed our centers to the next person in line, who added a border. Once that was done, it was passed to the next person.

You can see the dilemma - what began as an eighteen inch center rapidly became a very, very large quilt. Mine, which is still unquilted, comes in a little bigger than king size.

One of the women owned a bed and breakfast. A veteran of past round robins, she knew to make her center a rectangle rather than a square, in order to give the final quilt the shape she wanted. Her plan was to use the quilt on a bed in the B & B.

By the time her quilt got to me, it was already queen size. Her center was a darling Overall Sam, with all the borders carrying on the country theme. Rather than adding another border, I e-mailed her and offered to make coordinating pillow shams.

I had just run across a perfect block pattern: running chickens.

Chicken Dash!

The sham is just laid over the couch, so you don't get the full effect here. If you click on the picture for a better look, you'll see the embroidered legs, button eyes and three dimensional wings. The body of the sham is made from rooster print fabric.

It's made envelope style; the buttons are functional. Unbutton the front, drop the pillow in from the top and button back up.

I do love the chickens. At some point, I'd love to do a small quilt or a wall hanging with the chicken blocks and some pieced, farm-related blocks.

Yeah, file that with all the other ideas floating around in my head. Too many ideas, not enough time. But at least these got done.

Oh - that sweet young lady who organized the round robin? She's gone on to become a very successful and talented long arm machine quilter. Too bad she is too far away for me to send my tops to be quilted.