I’m so excited for the Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show this year! I’m leaving for the show tomorrow, heading out with three friends from PMQG, while my family holds down the fort in Portland. Can’t believe it’s this weekend!! Twenty quilts, each by a different guild member, will be in our PMQG special exhibit. So awesome, I can’t wait to see them all in person…

I’m so happy and thankful that my Oceanside quilt will be part of our show. It feels like so long ago that I took this photo and got the idea (three years last month!) and then piecing it together with Cotton Couture solids was really challenging and fun – so different than any other quilt I’ve ever made. It’s traveled a long way… from the first little tiny baby idea stage at the beach, to its birth in Portland, and on to the other side of Oregon for our show in the high desert.

Here is my Oceanside all finished up at Cool Cottons and ready to ship, quilted by Nancy Stovall!

I think my favorite quilt of all 20 has to be our collective Improv quilt from our Michael Miller challenge. Fifteen PMQG members each made one block, but one is an extra-extra collective effort. When most of our board (Heather, Nancy, Petra and I) met to organize all the blocks into three quilt tops (Improv, Linear, and Graphic), we realized that we had 47 blocks instead of the 48 we thought.

The other two tops (Linear and Graphic) felt right at 16 apiece. So the four of us improvisationally (and quickly!) pieced one last block to tie things together for Improv. Michelle gave such a great presentation on improvisational piecing in March, after the exercise she led at the all-day sew where we each built blocks in turns, and it was very inspiring – and fun to do!

See you in Sisters (we are hosting meet-ups in our exhibit space at noon and 4:00 on Saturday if you’re there)… or at our PMQG meeting next Thursday. Hopefully we will hang onto this sunshine and see everyone at Laurelhurst Park!