Community Quilting - A Forest

One of the cool things about being in a guild is getting to do things that you wouldn't normally in the name of charity.  My Guild (the Brisbane Modern Quilt Guild) coordinates an internal quilt bee, where a particular block is set and then whoever wants to will make those blocks and ta da!! A quilt... Ok, well there's slightly more to it than that, but it's not really the point of the story..

So A couple of months ago, I took a turn at setting the block.  I love the tree quilts that the Portland Modern Quilt Guild do and figured that our girls love a bit of improv goodness so I'd turn them loose.

I asked for 10.5" squares with any green/brown/cream/white and showed them my inspiration photo, and made a couple as examples...

In fact, I took to my sewing room with vigor and grabbed all my green scraps to make a squillion little trees.  The crumb piecing is actually super fun and very addictive.  I made so many green blobs, I don't know what to do with them! The hardest part for me was a) having a selection of browns so all my trunks aren't the same - I don't have a whole lot of brown scraps so I needed to cut from my yardage, but this feels so wasteful when all I really need is a 3 " square and b) using all my low volume.  I love low volume. I hoard it. And I know it's just white(ish) fabric, and there will always be more, but it's just so darn hard to start cutting it.  It feels like I'm wasting it. #lifeofahoarder

But no matter how many I made it's rally the ladies in my amazing Guild who made this an epic quilt. They let their imaginations fly and the resulting blocks are just wonderful.

My absolute favourite is this little tiny orchard!! It's so cute!!!!

One of the ladies stretched the edges of her block size to make this gorgeous Savannah tree (which I absolutely love, btw) but it did mean that I needed to adjust my layout to allow the extra width on this block...

In some ways I think that that was actually a really good thing for this quilt, becasue it means there's no gird in the piecing at all. None of the rows line up with any other, and I made some skinny little trees to fit in gaps, and bulk up other blocks.

I also used more low volume in places to space the blocks out. This is particularly noticeable in the top left where a little boab tree needed more space to really shine. If I'd stuck with the exact blocks I reckon this little guy would have ended up a wee bit crowded.

Now that they're all together, I have handed it over to one of the lovely talented ladies at BrisMQG who will do some fantabulous long arming all over it (thank you Miss Nerida!), then someone might offer to bind it (if I'm really lucky) and it will be donated to it's new home - The Salvation Army Crisis Accommodation Service.

I love this quilt. And I'm so grateful to Wombat Quilts for the inspiration, and the BMQG for diving in to this project, that was outside of some peoples comfort zone (improv is not for everybody). I love that our Guild prioritises this kind of activity and being part of our community. Quilts are all about love and caring, and spreading that around, can only ever be considered a good thing.

E xx