Bloggers Quilt Festival

Dutch Windmill Quilt

The beautiful back.

Black thread for the black, variegated pink and orange for the windmills.  

Proof from where the fabric came.

Good morning!  It is Bloggers Quilt Festival time again and I've decided to participate this year by showing off the quilt I will probably always love the most of all my quilty children.   But, first some details on Bloggers Quilt Festival:  Bloggers Quilt Festival is a virtual festival hosted by Amy's Creative Side and I encourage everyone to go there and look at all the amazing quilts up for display this year.  Bloggers Quilt Festival is my kind of festival - you can look at all the amazing quilts while in your pajamas and drinking coffee with a cat on your lap (this may or may not be what I am doing right now).

Now that you are all encouraged to go somewhere else, let me tell you a little about my Dutch Windmills Quilt and why I've decided to put it up for display this year.  This quilt consists of fabrics I purchased last year at a fabric store in Amsterdam which specializes in reproduction fabrics.  I really wanted to make something to commemorate my trip to the land of Van Gogh, and I felt that a quilt made of these fabrics was absolutely the thing to do.  This quilt also marked a series of firsts for me.  It was the first time I bought fabric without a pattern directing me how much fabric to buy.  It was the first time I made my own pattern (based on a couple windmill patterns I found on line, but adjusted for the flowers in the fabric).  It was the first time I used two different colors for the quilting process (I thought black was  needed for the black parts, but I didn't want the black to overwhelm the blocks).  It was the first time I really tried to put "meaning" into a quilt; fabrics from a place I visited, quilting the windmills with a bit of orange to symbolize the national color of the Netherlands.  It was the first quilt I brought to work and showed off to my friends.

Looking back at this quilt, my skills were still a little raw (and they still are now for that matter), and I can see a couple of things that I would do different.  But, this is still my favorite quilt of all time; warts and all, I love it.  It hangs on a wall in my bedroom and every day I look at it an remember that great store in Amsterdam and the experience of escaping the tour for an hour with a fellow quilter to dash across the city, grab fabric and dash back to the tour.  It was so much fun and I love how my quilt tells me that story.