Cirque Du Sol ' Aire

The Airedale quilting bee has just announced their newest quilt for 2007! It absolutely is one of the most fun quilts that mom has done to date!

This Big Top theme was decided on last year. It takes the bee a whole year to plan one of these quilts!

The circus quilt idea was selected because all of the Airedale bee moms agree that we're just big goofy clowns!

Once the ladies have their theme, everyone decides what they want their Airedale to do under the Big Top! I decided that I wanted to be a clown in a tiny car.

The quilters are all given a block size and Christie, the bee's designer, sends background fabrics out to each of the quilters so that their blocks all blend once the entire quilt is sewn together. Mom and all the quilters have to stay within a specific color scheme and they're off and running! Mom loves shopping at the fabric store! That woman can stay gone for HOURS when she's shopping for Airedale quilt material!

Mom didn't draw her own pattern. Linda Hobbit drew it for her. She's drawn several of mom's blocks. She's a very talented artist! Drawing is not one of mom's strong points.

That's the best part of being involved with the bee, mom says - everyone works together for the same cause!

Once mom finishes with her block, it's shipped to Christie so she can assemble all the blocks into this awesome quilt and then the quilt travels to yet another bee member who actually does the quilting! It's a big process but well worth everyone's efforts!

This is mom's finished block.

You can see the finished quilt here. If you keep hitting "next" down at the right hand bottom of the page, you can meet all the quilters and artists and promo people involved. Guess what? This is the first year that Mitch's picture is associated with the quilt! Pretty cool, huh!

Naming the quilt is always fun too! So many great ideas are thrown out there and the group has to narrow it down to the perfect choice!

Mom feels so fortunate to be a part of the bee and to be able to work with all of these talented ladies and to turn out a project that will benefit all the Airedales in need!

I just wanted to share the latest Airedale quilting bee project with you all. I hope you enjoy seeing it as much as mom enjoyed working on it!

Until next time.................

Love ya lots,

Maggie