four way swap ~ part three

We are home from our vacation on the beach! Did you miss me? I missed you! I have a few other posts about the trip I want to share with you, but first....guess who I had the pleasure of meeting while on vacation? Calamity Kim! We had arranged for me to come to her house for a visit. We were both a little nervous about meeting in person, but we fell into good conversation quickly. Kim is so cute and bubbly and creative and generous! It was a treat for our eyes (my kids were there too) to look at all the decorations and goodies that Kim has made and collected for her home. And I loved her craft room. I was stuffing my pockets when she wasn't looking.



Just kidding. But you have to be careful around Kim. If you say you like a fabric she has she will rip you off a piece right there! So I did a little shopping in Kim's craft room.



She also treated us to lunch, then we had a walk on the beach and a trip to a wonderful quilt shop. Where we did a little shopping. Here's my loot!



It was surreal being around all the quilts on Kim's walls. Quilts that I've seen out here in blogland and on flickr. So of course I had to have my picture taken with a few. hee






But the main reason for the trip, was for me to deliver her four way swap package. The inspiration for her quilt came from Kim's love of dolls and this flickr picture.



The rules for this round were:
1. include birds
2. include neutrals
3. include recipient's color of choice (blue/aqua for Kim)
4. include liberated piecing



For the bird rule, I wanted to use flying geese, but I didn't want them to distract from the look I was going for. So I used all neutrals so that the geese gave texture to the quilt along with the pieced background. The "dolls" were inspired by a quilt by Freddy Moran shown in the book Collaborative Quilting. I free pieced the dolls (another example of taking a paper pieced pattern and using it as a guideline to free piecing).



Kim's quilt for me wasn't quite ready yet, so she gave me a consolation gift of a huge fat quarter bundle. So unnecessary, but never look a fabric gift horse in the mouth, right? Plus the bonus of her not being ready is that she might come to my house to deliver my quilt! How fun!



All in all, it was a fun day with a fun lady. I'm glad that we had that time together, even if she did hit Marguerite in the head (on accident). M's ok. No damage done. Maybe that is why Kim was giving me so much fabric.....

Until next time folks, when I share the quilts I've received so far for the four way swap!