Blogger's Quilt Festival: Western Tanager Mini Quilt

It's that time of year again!  Amy from "Amy's Creative Side has been hosting the semi-annual "Blogger's Quilt Fest" for more than a few years now.  It's the best virtual quilt show that I've found!  Thanks Amy!

I made this paper pieced mini quilt as a block in Joanna's (of Shape Moth) Forest Quilt Along that she hosted last Spring.  It is her "Eurasian Jay" pattern that I tweaked a little and changed the coloring to turn it into one of my very favorite birds, the Western Tanager.

Quilting this was a lot of fun.  I turned all 6 of the blocks that I made into either mini quilts or a pillow, all of which reside in our living room. They were just too pretty to fold up and tuck away into a closet.

The quilt is 16 inches by 16 inches, and took just as long to make as many of my much larger quilts.

Please look at the link above to see other wonderful quilts made by the blogger community!!

Forest Quilt Along, and July Finish!

Over the week-end, I put the finishing binding on my Forest Quilt Along blocks / quilts!  As I mentioned in this post, it was also my July "A Lovely Year of Finishes" goal. I was hoping to make all 12 blocks, but life suddenly got really busy after 6 were made.  I hope to make at least a few extras in the months to come.

Since I only had 6, and love, love, love these blocks, I knew that I wanted to make something that I could put up on our walls, and look at every day.  I decided to split them all up to spread the love all over the house, and made 2 mini quilts, and 1 throw pillow.

As usual, the quilting part of theses was a lot of fun too.  Here's a few details:

Thanks again to Joanna, Julianna, and all of the other artists and wonderful hosts of this quilt along!

Happy Earth Day

I finished this "Eurasian Jay" Forest Quilt Along Block over the week-end, and thought it'd be the perfect block to share on Earth Day!  I've never seen a Eurasian Jay, but the pictures of them are so beautiful.

I decided to modify / disguise my bird and try to make a Western Tanager.  It's probably the most beautiful bird that I have ever encountered in the forest.  When I worked in wildlife biology surveying for the Spotted Owls in SW Oregon, I'd see these timid birds from time to time in the forest.  The males are so incredibly beautiful, and as you can see from this page in my "Peterson Field Guide to Western Birds", he's definitely a male.

Here are my Forest QAL blocks so far.  I have been enjoying this quilt along so much, as it combines 2 things I love... quilting and forests.

I though I'd put in a picture of our solar panels.  We were so lucky to be able to be involved in the local city program that helped us buy these.  Due to the weak economy and budget cuts, the program has not been able to continue, sadly.

These 12 panels supply all of the electricity we use in our house, including my sewing machine and iron, for all but about 3-4 months out of the year.  It fluctuates, depending on how hot the summer is (and how much we use the AC), and how cloudy our winter is (short cloudy days are not good for solar electricity production).

We are so happy with these!  We also drive a hybrid car, which we bought used about 6 years ago.  Our next plan is to replace our not-very-efficient heat system and hot water system, both of which are natural gas.  We try to do as much as we can to "lower our carbon footprint", but there's always room for improvement... One very small thing I'll do today is to head off to our local recycling center.  We have no curb side recycling here (booo), so I take a load every month or so.  I'd love to hear about any other Earth Day activities you are doing today and every day, because, as the saying goes... Every day is Earth Day.