Crazy for Cherries

When I was young, my family used to go to the Traverse City area of northern Michigan (in the "little finger" area, for you Michiganders!) for our summer vacations. In case you don't know this, Traverse City is "The Cherry Capital". We always had a wonderful time there, and I love those memories of my family. Cherry motifs always remind me of that time and place, and so does the "Cottage" decorating look, as most of the places we stayed at were little cottages and were kind of quirky, kitschy and cottage-y. I love that look. So, this quilt is to remind me of all that.
I call this "Crazy for Cherries" and it's made out of mostly cherry fabrics. It actually started with the border fabric that I found at Daisy Kingdom in Portland a number of years ago. Then, of course, I had to collect cherry fabrics to go with it. That actually wasn't too hard to do! I think I ended up with more fabrics than what I used in the quilt!


This was a pattern in Fons & Porter's magazine called "Crazy 9-Patch". A bunch of my friends decided we'd all make quilts together, to help us all figure out how to do this. It was tons of fun, and easy to do. Of course, it helps if you can count. You're supposed to stack 9 fabrics together and then "slice and dice", shift fabrics, then sew together. I think there's lots of patterns like this out now. Anyway, I somehow got 10 fabrics stacked up. It just created more variety in those blocks, and left me with an extra block. Apparently, I did this twice, because there's 2 extra blocks on the back! Like I said, counting is a good skill in quilting!

Here's a closeup of one of the blocks, so that you can see some of those cherry fabrics. On the right is the cherry border fabric that started it all. I believe it was a Mary Engelbreit fabric.

And here's a closeup of the quilting. This is on the back of the quilt because it shows better here. My friend S~ did the long-arm quilting on this, and I'm thrilled with her work! She's an awesome, free-hand quilter!

Here's a picture of the back. I pieced together all my left-over and un-used cherry fabrics for the back. It took much longer to piece this (or at least it felt like it!) than it did to do the front! (If you look carefully, you can see the tail of the inspecting cat disappearing off to the left.)

Shade cannot resist the quilt laying on the floor. He must get under it!

Here he is, all cozy in his quilt cave.

Dunkel is intrigued with the giant lump in the quilt, and must investigate. Shade gets disgusted with him and leaves.

Dunkel is triumphant! The quilt is his!

And, here is the latest progress picture from the quilt studio. I managed to empty 3 large boxes of fabric over the long weekend! I'm getting worried. I have a lot more fat quarters than I thought I did, and I'm running out of places to put them! I have filled all the small bins and am starting on the large bins!

DH and I went to see the new Indiana Jones movie last night. I really enjoyed it! I love a rousing good adventure movie, and I love Indy Jones. I can't believe how old Harrison Ford is looking, but none of us are what we used to be! (I did miss Sean Connery though. I thought he was the best part of I.J. #3.) This movie didn't disappoint me, so I was very happy. I'd recommend this movie, if you liked the others.