Starting the Journey: Round Trip Quilts

During the Plum and June New Blogger Hop, several bees were started all over the world.  I’m taking part in a US/Canada based round robin bee called Round Trip Quilts.  We are starting this long journey this week as we mail the start of our quilts to the first person.

I went through many ideas for what I wanted this quilt to be.  I considered an ode to North Carolina (where we’ve lived for 5 years now – amazing for an Army family!), a sewing themed quilt for me, but landed on a quilt for my daughter.

While preparing for a different idea, I decided I wanted to paper piece the phrase “be strong”.  Once my husband and I saw how great it looked, we started coming up with tons of other ideas for these phrases to include in the quilt.  Then, I realized that instead of just one of these phrases in my quilt, I wanted the theme of my quilt to be based on this.

While trying to come up with some more possibilities, I googled the phrase “wishes for my daughter“.  That’s when I knew what this quilt was going to be. This quilt is going to be called “Wishes for my daughter.”

I have provided paper pieced phrases to be scattered throughout the quilt.  I want the other members of the bee to create blocks or sections to separate the phrases.

This isn’t really the traditional “center” that usually start a round robin, but I really loved this idea and hope everyone else enjoys working on it as well.  I don’t have a preference for how they separate the phrases – it can be pieced blocks, paper pieced designs, row by row style blocks, or anything else I can’t even dream of!  I think this will turn out really cool.  Then at the end, I will hopefully be able to size this up to a twin size quilt by adding some of the longer phrases that I did not have time to paper piece before the first mailing.

I suggested filling in the spaces with things a little girl would like… such as animals (red fox is currently a hit in our household), flowers, fruit, flying objects (birds, butterflies, airplanes), deer, dogs, outdoors, and traditional pieced blocks.  To include Mom and Dad, I mentioned that I like sewing and Dad likes fly fishing.

In case anyone wants the details of these phrases, I used the “Just my type” alphabet pattern from Quiet Play.  It looks great, but takes quite a bit of time!  I printed the pieces at 120%, which makes them 6 inches tall.  I wanted the letters inside of the words closer together so I cut the edges off 3/4″ from the edge of the letter.  I usually used the full width of the pattern for letters that started or ended words.

My contribution to the “center” is this sailboat.  I was fortunate enough to sail quite a bit growing up (although on nothing near as fancy as this boat!), and so counted it as something I like to fit in with the phrases.  This pattern is from Daisy at Ants to Sugar, and she will be releasing this pattern on Craftsy soon.

I’m super excited to see what everyone comes up with.  There are already some amazing things floating around on instagram and flickr.  Round Trip Quilts now has a Flickr group and you can follow us on Instagram using #roundtripquilts!  You can also find a summary of all of our posts on Never Just Jennifer’s Round Trip Quilts page!  Eventually, I’ll get this on my blog too – but for now check out how organized she is and marvel 🙂

The full list of members is below:

Heather at QA Creations

Leanne at Devoted Quilter

Kim at Ties That Bind Quilting

Liz at Green Cheese Quilting

Mary at See Mary Quilt

Christina at WIPs and Tuts

Jennifer at Never Just Jennifer

Chelsea Huckins at Patch the Giraffe

 

Linking up to: Anything Goes Monday, Fabric Tuesday @ Quilt Story, Sew Cute Tuesday @ Blossom Heart Quilts, WiP Wednesday @ Freshly Pieced, Whoop Whoop Fridays @ Confessions of a Quilt Addict, Fabric Frenzy Friday @ Ft. Worth Fabric