Quilt Soup’s Birds & the Bees

First order of business…our adorable Emma has learned to crawl!

Now for our featured designer of the day, Barbara Jones! QuiltSoup has created a wonderful new block-of-the-month that starts in April for those of you who are ready to bask in warm weather again! It’s called Birds and the Bees, and Barbara Jones explains why she designed it and the inspiration for it.

Thank you for the opportunity to talk about our latest Month-by-Month quilt, Birds and the Bees. We are so excited about this new quilt, it is hard to contain our enthusiasm!

Our inspiration for this quilt was three-fold. I teach a continuing appliqué class each month to a terrific group of women, and we needed a new project for 2008. Birds and the Bees is for intermediate quilters who want a bit of a challenge without being overwhelmed, so it was just right.

Second, I have always wanted to make a Grandmother’s Flower Garden quilt but have come to realize that probably won’t happen in my lifetime. I just don’t think I could stick with it long enough! But I CAN make 2 of those blocks! Our program is called Month-by-Month because we usually make 2 blocks per month. We find that it takes one block to understand a technique and a second one to polish it. We begin with the easiest blocks first and work our way up to more challenging ones. It is my fondest hope that customers not only have fun along the way but also learn a little something. We find that learning something new is inspirational all but itself!

And lastly, Birds and the Bees was inspired by our idea of what an early summer looks like. The blocks have names like Honey Bee Garden, Bird’s Nest and Grandmother’s Flower Garden. The new Dandelion Girl collection by Fig Tree for Moda is a lovely collection that is soft yet has enough punch for early summer days.

We hope you like the quilt as much as we do and have tons of fun making it Month-by-Month! We invite everyone to visit us at www.QuiltSoup.com where they can see all of our products and find a new soup recipe every month.