birdi quilt of friends and family memories
 

We had a birthday swap on this board hosted by our Queen Bee, BarbaraKibler23, where we swapped 2.5" charms for each others birthday and made embroidered birdie blocks for each month of the year. It was the most memorable swap I ever participated in. My children looked at the blocks and said, "I remember when we built those snowmen (jan block) or picked those Easter eggs (april block) or went to the beach (july block)". Then, everyone started thinking up family events over the years, and the quilt grew from 12 blocks to 30. I drew a picture of the event, outline it with the lazy daisy stitch and colored it with derwent inktense pencils and blocks. I framed each block with the charms from a board member, so I could remember that gift. Then I assembled by the QAYG method, and backed it with 30 random fat qtrs after I added a boarder. The children are now fighting over the quilt for ownership, but it is on an extra bed in my house where I can think of my quiltingboard friends all the time. I am only going to post about a dozen of the 30 blocks below so you can see how cute some of them turned out. I know they mean more to me than to ya'll, but i wanted to share with my birthday swap friends so they could see their charms are loved and not just sitting in a box some where.

Below is a block of me and my quilting room, surrounded by DJmat's charms:

My daughter went to the College of William and Mary in Vvirginia on a track scholarship to throw the discus and is surrounded by Juanita b.'s charms:

My son in law is a fire alarm tech, and this is his block, surrounded by Sally G blocks:

My daughter heads a non profit roller derby group, and her block is surrounded by clmays charms:

One of my daughters went to Yale for advanced degrees in Physical Chemistry, and wmuteach charms surround her block:

My son in law loves riding his John Deere tractor around. those are crispy frog's charms on this block:

My daughter is always teaching her children to fly. Here they are picking cherries out of our cherry tree, surrounded in Red Stilettos charms:

What a cheerful and fun quilt!

We have all been married in the temple, and this is our center square on the quilt, surrounded by onaemtnest's charms: