Tumbling

I love participating in Kate North's "Another Little Quilt Swap" as it challenges me to finish a cute quilt to send away and in return I get to treasure someone else's lovely work.  Yes, it really is a little quilt swap.  This year's swap, the seventh one, has a required size of 12" x 12".  Anyone can join in -- no pressure other than to finish your quilt and send digital photos to Kate by the announced deadline.  Everyone who gets their digital photos sent by the deadline is then eligible to make a "wish list" from the posted quilts.  Kate has the fun task - first of posting all of our photos and descriptions, then of sorting out all the wish-lists and figuring out who will get which quilt.  Of course she also must send us each the name and address of who our quilt is going to (we like to make it a surprise reveal!).  She monitors that all quilts are mailed and received (a few have taken very circuitous routes to their new homes - perhaps traveling around the world on a slow mail-boat), then posts the "grand reveal" on the ALQS blog.  That post won't be up for sometime as we are all busy wrapping and packing our little quilts to send off now.

Without further ado, here is "Tumbling" - my little quilt made specially for the ALQS7 swap this year.

Tumbling was made in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness.  Think Pink campaigns are everywhere (in the USA) and I hope to encourage everyone to have annual mammograms as well as to do monthly self-breast exams.  Early detection (gulp) leads to a tumbling of emotions but also has a higher cure rate!  This piece began as a design exercise, inspired by directions given in Color and Composition for the Creative Quilter by Katie Pasquini Masopust.  The addition of borders helped the piece grow to the required 12" x 12" size.

In the detail view, you can see that the quilting is very geometric and linear in the background, but gets funky and twisty in the tumbling blocks.  Additional twisting and turning ribbon-thread embellishment is couched on top, adding to the tumbling sensation of the entire piece.  Rather than binding it off in traditional quilt fashion, a slip-cover pocket was sewn to the back which converts the quilt into a pillow.

I am packaging up my little Tumbling quilt/pillow and will soon be mailing it to its new home .... to be revealed later!  Hopefully someone will be very pleased to discover this in their mailbox....

Click here to see the original post about Tumbling in the ALQS blog.