Panel Quilts and the Quilting Mojo....

Have you ever used a printed panel(sometimes referred to as a cheater panel) and quilted it up?
This eagle is one of a few panel quilts that I have made. The two eagle quilts were given as gifts for two of my colleagues when they left our school staff. They quilt up quite nicely and,as you can see Mars the cat approves of them also. These panels are a nice size, and were made big enough that they would be a nice couch quilt. In both cases though, my colleagues chose to use them as wall quilts.
In the past, I have also used panel blocks to make quillow quilts(a quilt that you can fold up and form it into a pillow shape. You make a pocket on the back of it and it pulls out and makes a couch size coverlet.
One can also find some lovely fun panels that can be used for baby quilts. I still have two that I created for my son, when he was a baby. You stitch in the ditch around the characters and voila, you have a lovely crib sized quilt!
I also found panels for pillows and the insets on clothing such as aprons. Panels are useful for vests too and I have used them to create seasonal pieces of clothing. My kindergarten kids love to check out the Easter bunnies, Halloween cats,stars, school symbols and spring flowers on my seasonal vests!!

Today was spent lazing about, as my sciatic nerve was giving me some trouble- Bruce and I managed to go for a short stroll around the block tonite. It was a mild evening with spring beginning to appear in our neighbourhood. We saw some tulips and crocuses in bloom. The grass is starting to green up and the peony and irises are developing their leaves and greenery.

This weekend is Victoria Day weekend here in Canada, so it is the first holiday weekend of the season.
When I was a child, we would go camping in the foot hills of Alberta. One of my first memories(I was about 5 or 6)is of camping beside one of the rivers in a tent. We woke up to snow on the ground that particular trip.
The weather this spring has been cool - perhaps cool enough to snow for those who might be brave enough to be camping this weekend. When your a child camping in a tent seems like a big adventure - in middle age I prefer the creature comforts of home or at least a nice hotel LOL..

This evening, I have brought down some fabrics that I think that I have chosen to make a Trip around the World quilt- I have been ruminating about this quilt for some time, and want to begin making it. One of the most challenging parts of quiltmaking for me, is to actually settle on my project and fabric choices. Once I have made a decision,I get moving pretty quickly.

What about you - Do you get ever get stuck in some part of the quilt process?

Perhaps, you are like me, it is at the beginning when you are choosing your fabrics and patterns? or maybe it is in the middle when the making of blocks begins to feel a bit repetitive? or it is near the end when you are trying to decide how to quilt it and bind it?

What do you do to get your quilt MOJO moving? For me, its usually because I am making a quilt for someone important to me and I have a deadline to get it done.

For this particular quilt, I had pulled some fabrics from my stash, quite awhile ago, that I thought might fit the color palette -that was the easy part. I hope that the simplicity of The Trip around the World pattern will match the decor for the intended room. It feels good to have made a decision - Now the process of creating a quilt begins...

Until next week-
Regards,
Anna