Live a Colorful Life Quilt Diary: block exchange

In about 2013, I gathered together women of a certain age and started a bee called Mid Century Modern, where the main criterion was that you needed to be age 50+.

When it was my turn to be in charge of a month, I chose a block called Winged Square by Amy Friend.

At this point I still have not completed all the quilts using blocks from Mid Century Modern. "Friendship Circles" is the first one to reach the stage of completion and I absolutely love it!

The quilt started with these blocks.

For the longest time I couldn't figure out how I wanted to set the blocks. And then I saw this great quilt (Pink Grapefruit by Coleen Merte) in an issue of Quiltmaker magazine. These were 8" blocks and the curved parts were appliqued on. Thanks to EQ8, I was able to go to the "orange peel" block section and resize the same block to 12", print out templates and the curved sections were sewn together, not appliqued.

That led to experimenting...

And I just knew this setting was going to be a winner.

It was beautifully quilted by Darby.

I put all the signature blocks on the back, along with two additional blocks. One of the blocks had been made with Kona white rather than Kona snow and you could really see the difference. I was sorry to put it on the back because I sure love the blues and greens.

I knew exactly where I wanted to have a photo shoot--at one of the local churches with a large world globe in the front, the perfect choice because of the round block setting and because some friends in the bee were from outside the United States. A good friend, Lynette Johnson, also took some beautiful photographs--the first time she had photographed quilts. I hope we do some more collaboration in the future.

She took a lot of pictures and I'm including all the ones she sent me because I love each one--especially the ones where she took advantage of the setting sun.

It won Honorable Mention in the Best of the Valley quilt show in 2019.

Quilt name: Friendship Circles
Blocks made by: Members of the Mid Century Modern bee, 2013
Setting design: Coleen Merte
Quilt made by: Cindy Wiens
Quilted by: Darby Myers (Quilted Squid)
Size: 72" by 72"

The Nest began in about 2009 with a group of bird blocks that were part of a block exchange among friends.

Elizabeth Hartman had a cute pattern in one of her books called The Nest, but where I ultimately placed my bird blocks (which were 8"), hers were only 3". So that meant I had to enlarge the bird house blocks quite a bit!

This is my block, the scissor tail flycatcher, state bird of Oklahoma, where I lived until after fourth grade.

I had to do a bit of math but I really love how the bird houses showcase each bird. Some members of the block exchange did bird feeders, so those were a fun addition as well.