Wild Geese is this weeks theme

By now you know I enjoy the weekly themed contests that Quilting Gallery holds whether or not I have something that fits the theme. It is always fun to see what other quilters do with similar blocks and patterns.

When I was sorting through my scraps, I found one baggy filled with half square triangles. Most of those are leftovers from a much earlier quilt. Long ago, a friend living in Tokyo ordered fabric from Keepsake Quilters. She had a military address so she could easily have it posted to Japan. From time to time she would receive cut square samples of fabric from which she made her choice and the rest she gave to me, rightly thinking I could use them in a quilt.

Now, I have always loved the geese blocks. Having lived several times in my life along flyways, I love to watch the migrating birds passing through. I recall the first time my daughters experienced clouds of birds overhead, coming to the yard and taking off again into the sky. "Look, Mom, it's raining birds!", my daughter exclaimed. Wild geese went on to my list of future quilts.

So when I had a good selection of fabric samples from my friend, I cut them to make flying geese, using the lighter fabrics to set the geese. At that point I began to look for a nice floral print too use between the rows of geese. I don't recall how long I looked but I just could not find anything that would work.

Finally, thinking I would never find the fabric I wanted, I sat down with a pencil and paper and made a list. The list had the names of flowers from my gardens in assorted places through the years, those that had special meaning to me alone. Then I divided them by season and drew pictures on four strips of paper, one for each season. I added some birds to represent those seasons too, the ones to be found in my garden.

I quilted the background of the panels in a lattice design and in the border are quilted all different leaves, most Japanese trees but some from the States as well. You would be surprised how many friends got involved sending me pressed leaves to use as patterns.

The name of the quilt is "To Everything there is a Season" and, although not a winner, it made a trip to Paducah. (Something I have never done)
Being selected as one of 400 out of over 900 entries was quite an honor and it returned home with the judges compliments.

This was not my only quilt with wild geese blocks but others have flown away as gifts and no digital photos exist. I entered this once before in a flowers theme but it is not a big eye-catcher. Still, it is one of my all-time favorites because of the pieces of my life it represents.