What is good about snow in March?

I am trying to find things to cheer me when I look out the window this March day.  Ever since I lived in England my mind harkens back to the daffodils at street vendors and shops and in the churchyard of the village I lived in.  I only spent two years living there but the memory has stayed helped by a birthday when daffodils were available.

Well I have 3 very tiny tulips blooming in the front window.  Brave souls.  Everything is clean and white.  It is quite silent outside.  I know this is really stretching it when your soul longs for spring.

So spring means our guild is doing up quilts for children who are sick in hospital and babies who must remain until they are strong enough to face the world.  Some of these end up on my frame for quilting. It is a fun challenge mixing practical and trying to make the quilting interesting.

I found a Beatrix Potter fabric in a sort of left over bin and took enough to make a small baby quilt.  Beatrix Potter was a huge part of my growing up and I have had the opportunity to go to the farm where she wrote a great many of her stories.  It is beautiful and pastoral like the pictures in her books.  

They say quilts talk.  They do.  I got the fabric unpieced on the frame and there were the individual vignettes saying don't stitch me all over.  I know it is practical but we are individual stories.  So in spite of the various shapes that are created by outlining the drawings it has been possible to maintain each with a bit of curved stitching between the outlines to make sure each picture does not puff out and good old meandering in the spaces in between.  These are what one might call creative blocks.  There is always a way to make a quilt talk.  This quilt will hug a newborn, cheer up a toddler and in some way continue the Beatrix Potter legend when the quilt goes home with the family.

So between this one and other very colourful ones done by guild members, it will be sunny and spring in my frame room.  Here are a couple of the vignettes stitched out.  One more turn of the frame and this one will be ready to be bound and labelled and part of our gift to unknown babies and children.

I try to make each quilt different as possible and to quilt with caring.  We have enough mass produced goods in our lives.