What's On the Bed?

I changed the sheets and changed the quilt. So, I'm linking with all the other quilts at Bonnie Hunter's Quiltville.     I would love to see what's on your bed, so if you haven't already, please link to yours at Bonnie's blog.  I would love to see more.  (I've been looking at a few every day, and I think the linky party is open for a couple more days.)

This quilt is one of my all time favorites.  It's called Anemone and was made between 1992 and 1996.

 It was inspired by a quilt that had appeared in an old E. P. Dutton quilt calendar.  If I remember correctly, That Patchwork Place published a similar quilt in one of their books that was as much about history as it was about quiltmaking.

 This was made the old-fashioned way; drafting the pattern with pencil and compass, tracing templates on plastic, drawing around each one on fabric, pieced by hand for the most part.  The circles containing the sunflower were pieced rather than appliqued or reverse appliqued. It was set together by machine. 

 I carried little baggies of fabric, needle, thread, scissors, and thimble everywhere I went for several years.

 Aside from the colors, my favorite parts are the 3/4 compasses at each corner and the 1/2 compasses at the center of each border.

 I like the fact that the blocks are all different and that the fabrics are from many fabric lines. While there are quite a few Hoffman fabrics in this quilt, it also contains fabrics from SSI, P&B, Alexander Henry, and quite a few other manufacturers.

I'm pretty sure I started it when I was living in Gallup, NM and continued working on it when I moved to Arizona and back to NM.  While in Gallup, I was part of a great quilt guild, and had been in Arizona for a while when I received a call alerting me to the fact that my name had reached the top of the list to have one of my quilts quilted.  I finished assembling the top, carefully drafted a feather border, purchased more fabric for the backing and sent it off with my favorite (at that time) batting, Mountain Mist Quilt Light.

I can still see some of the white pencil I used in the feathers; and I'm certain my name was uttered less than favorably many times during the quilting process.  One of the reasons this quilt is so special to me is that so many very special friends helped quilt it, too many of whom have now passed on.  (One of my Sweet Teen's middle names is Margrette for one of the many dear quilters who befriended me when I lived there.)

Ah, the sweet memories of sweet blessings that live on in our quilts.......