boats! boats! boats!

Or in this case:  Ice Boats! Ice Boats! Ice Boats!

 

I started this in November at Camp Stitchalot.  I thought it would be fun to work on a simple pattern while meeting new friends and quilters.  It was!  The pattern is by Brenda from Just A Bit Frayed.  Her quilt and the pattern were featured by the Modern Quilt Guild last July.

Here are the blocks arranged on my design wall.  Did you notice what happened?  I sewed every block together backwards - in every row.  I didn't notice this till I was joining all the rows together.  (I'm blaming this on a terrible virus I've been fighting for over 2 weeks now.)  Solution:  the wind has changed direction in my quilt!  

Or, turn the quilt on it's side.

This was my first time using wool batting and I LOVE how puffy the quilt is.  Super cozy, too!  If you hold the quilt vertically, the quilting represents the water.  If you hold it horizontally, the wind.  Both ways it works.  Yay!  I had intended to quilt each sail with a different pattern but ultimately decided to leave them.  I like how they look full of wind. 

The sails are Handcrafted by Alison Glass (available here or here).
The background is Kona Ash (here). 
The back is Ripples by Barri J (here).

This last photo was taken on the shore of Lake Michigan.  Almost 100 miles across to Wisconsin at this point.  It's a rare day that the wind is almost non existent.  It made the  -9 degrees F temperature feel like, well, -9.  Brrr!  A cold, beautiful, and fun day for a quilt photo shoot.