It's Monday! I'm taking today to join in the Around the World Blog Hop. I was tagged by Amy Friend, DuringQuietTime, designer of amazing paper pieced quilt blocks and also beautiful quilts, to add a post to the "Around the World Blog Hop."

I, in turn, am tagging Maer Soukaros to add a post next Monday. She's a New England resident, a quilt designer, and a member of our local quilt guild, Proper Bostonian Quilters. Her amazing "Fault in my Star" quilt won a prize in our Summer Challenge! Congrats Maer! It's a beautiful quilt! (Maer was modest and didn't mention that she'd won a prize when she wrote about the quilt in her blog last week)! She blogs at Thehard-rockquilter.blogspot.com. Can't wait to see her post next week!

1. What I've been working on:

I'm spending September finishing up projects that I started over the summer. I have a stack of 6 quilts waiting to be quilted. The most challenging one is the sampler quilt from the Flickr Vintage Quilt Revival Quilt Along. Each block will have a unique quilting pattern. It's exciting to think about, but it's going to take of lot of time to quilt. Making the blocks of this quilt improved my piecing skills. The book, Vintage Quilt Revival, has blocks that start easy and gain complexity. It was fun, and challenging, to make all the blocks.

I've been working all summer on learning to quilt in a circular pattern. I finally got it! Scroll back to my last post to see my latest project, The Bulls' Eye Quilt.

Last weekend I took a break from quilting to make a bird from Abby Glassenberg's book, The Artful Bird. Abby blogs at WhileSheNaps.

Here are 3 photos of my bird-making adventure:

Left to right:

The unstuffed body
Adding a left over wool batting for stuffing
The final bird standing on the book. There is another photo of my bird on Instagram @sleepingdogquilts.

Bird Purple sparrow being stuffed with wool batting.jpg

2. How does my work differ from others in its genre:

I've been quilting since my college years. Until recently, I usually made a quilt for a specific person or for a specific use, such as a baby quilt. At the end of last year, I retired after 30 years in pediatric nursing. I decided that I wanted to spend my suddenly "free" time learning more about quilting. I have the freedom now to make quilts just as explorations. They don't have to always work out. Everything is a great experience and I'm learning new things all the time. I've spent a lot of time thinking about color since I saw the "Quilts and Color" exhibit at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts earlier this year. Here are some of my exploration quilts.

Right to left:

A low volume strip baby quilt depicting sky, forest and sea
A quilt with complementary colors that create vibration when viewed together
A quilt with a casade of colors but not in the organized by the color wheel.

3. What do I create these quilts?

Because it's fun! And because I love art you can use (or wear)!. I sometimes wonder where I'll find my next idea….and then suddenly I have a stack of new projects that all what to be made NOW!

4. How does my creative process work?

I get my ideas and inspiration from lots of sources. The quilt exhibit at the MFA noted above started an exploration of color that lasted for months…and lead to the creation of an assortment of small projects. Sometimes I see fabric which gives me an idea for a design. Sometimes I see a quilt in a book that I want to make, or that quilt may be the jumping off point for the creation of an original design. Less often I'll see something in my neighborhood which will inspire me to create a quilt.

You don't want to see my workspace(s). Or maybe you do!! It's messy! I call it "creative chaos". I often buy fabric in sets--not typically all from a fabric line or designer, but things that I like together. I let these stacks of fabric pile up. When I walk past them, I think about how I'm going to use them. In sight is in mind. Put the fabrics in the bins of my stash and it's out of sight, out of mind unless it is something particularly spectacular that I am saving for a later date!

Here are 3 quilts and why they came to be:

Left to right:

Modern Hexagon Quilt--I wanted to try some English Paper piecing so I made a stack of hexagons. I knew I didn't want to make a traditional Grandma's garden. But some Modern quilts using hexagons in lines or cascades I'd seen on the Modern Quilt Guild site were intriguing. So I designed this Modern Hexagon quilt. It could be titled "Grandma's Garden Deconstructed"!
Jumbled Spool Quilt--I'd seen lots of spool quilts in books and on-line. The spools were always lined up perfectly. Mine never are! So I created my Jumbles Spools Quilt using a design roll of Bright Kona Cottons.
Portholes Quilt--I designed the Portholes quilt to practice quilting circles. My quilted circles didn't come out as planned but learning to quilt perfect circles has been a process for me, and this was a step along the way. I learned to make the reverse circles used for the sun and "portholes" from a Craftsy Class "Inset Circles and Applique by Machine" taught by Cheryl Arkison. I find Cheryl's books to be a great source of inspiration too!

It's fun to see what everyone has been writing in their posts on this Around the World Blog Hop! Follow the chain backwards or look for posts on Google. Happy travels!