Blogger's Quilt Festival: Serendipitous Sewing

This quilt was going to be a surprise, but I just finished it, just in time for the Blogger's Quilt Festival, so I feel like I should post it.  (even though I'm pretty sure its intended recipient, who you will meet in a moment, reads this blog so I'm spoiling my own surprise)

The fact that I finished it just in time and I didn't think it would be done yet just adds to the serendipity.  So, to the recipient: surprise!  This will be in the mail soon.

There are many parts to this story, which is why I feel like this little quilt was meant to be, but it also makes it difficult to determine where to begin this quilt's story.

Let's start with Suzanne.  I met Suzanne 12 years ago, my sophomore year in college (has it really been that long?!) when she and I ran on the cross country team together.  Our junior year, we were roommates; our senior year, we lived in the same house.  I admire Suzanne for a lot of reasons, and just one of them is her superior creativity and craftiness.  She is a creative inspiration for me.  She always has a good ideas in terms of design, decorating, crafting and creating.

One of the crafting ideas she once shared on her blog was a quilt designed by Denyse Schmidt.  Denyse is an artist/quilter/fabric designer whose studio is in Connecticut, only about 90 minutes from where we used to live (but I didn't know of her then).  I first learned of Denyse from the post on Suzanne's blog, but have since seen her and her creativity around the quilting/sewing/crafting/blogging world.  Recently, she has designed a couple fabric collections for JoAnn Fabrics.

I was in JoAnn Fabrics one day and found the Denyse Schmit prints on sale.  They were pretty, and so I picked up a few, not yet having a project in mind.

Meanwhile, I wanted to learn how to quilt and how to do free motion quilting on my machine.  I practiced on some scrap fabric and then attempted my table runner.  The next logical project was a baby quilt.  I have a few friends who have recently had babies, and I wish I could make a baby quilt for all of them, but sadly, I just don't have that kind of time.  However, I had recently finished a mei tai for Suzanne and I realized that the fabric she chose for her baby carrier fit right in with the Denyse Schmidt fabrics I had picked up from JoAnn's.

The back is a part of sheet that I dyes using a low water immersion dye technique, giving a mottled, water-y quality.

I'm thrilled to be able to thank Suzanne for her creative inspiration by gifting her something that was born of my creativity, made with materials designed by someone I was introduced to through Suzanne.