The Art of Riding Thermals: Villa Rosa Designs Blog Hop

Welcome to my stop on the first ever Fast and Fun Blog Hop with Villa Rosa Designs.

I was really pleased to be asked several months ago to be a part of this blog hop by Bernie of Needle & Foot. Make a quick quilt? Help out a designer? Be part of a hop? Sign me up!

The hop is based on a bundle of five super-quick quilt patterns. I chose Snow Goose and made it à la Sandra.

You can get all five patterns on sale right now by clicking here. If you are new to Villa Rosa Designs, as I was, then you might want to check out this link, which takes you to their shop where you can find... wait for it... over 500 of these postcard-sized fast quilt patterns. I had to look twice and scroll to a second page to believe my eyes: TWO DOLLARS per pattern. The instructions fit on a postcard. The quilts are super-fast.

When I was first asked to participate in the hop, I thought, cool, a quilt pattern on a postcard. Nope don't think I know VRD.

Then, when I sat down to write this post, I thought, wait a minute.... I feel like I may have made one of Villa Rosa Designs... I remember making a super-fast, easy quilt several years ago where the instructions were on a postcard that came in with the kit of fabrics... Yes! I made Cloud Nine back in 2013! (smacks self in forehead) You can check it out by clicking that link. Ten years later, here I am in a hop for them!

First dilemma: HOW to pick just one of the five to make?? I was drawn to Snow Goose because I do love flying geese, and I do love blues. My quilt did not end up being a runner and did not end up being blue. Those of you who know me, know that quilts talk to me all the time, and this one was no exception!

Last dilemma: The name -  Updraft/ Thermals/ Rise/ Wing It, were all possibilities.

The final name of the quilt came when I was researching how birds use updrafts. An article on Inside Science gave me the phrase 'The Art of Riding Thermals' which describes so eloquently what birds do to soar higher, without flapping their wings. The animal kingdom is so smart.

I knew that I wanted to put my own spin on the pattern by making the runner into a quilt. I wanted either a gradation of the geese or a rainbow, so I googled rainbow geese to see what would come up. Lots and lots of fun images. One block that caught my eye, because I love layered designs, is one I can no longer find! I think it was by Sherri McConnell but I can't find it now.

Update, Monday January 23: Guess what was in my Pinterest email this morning? And I don’t even have an Alexa or Google snoop thingie! Someone else’s rendition of Sharon’s Color Girl Quilts (not Sherri—welcome to my menopausally challenged mind) block. I firmly believe in giving credit, even if the end quilt is not quite the same as the original inspiration. I’ve seen my share of quilt design theft over the past few years… Like my block, hers has rainbow geese, but flying over grey on one side and white on the other, though her white and grey rectangles are longer, and she didn’t do a rainbow within each block.

I knew I would use my Island Batik stash and boy, am I glad I did. All but a couple of the batiks are theirs. Glorious clear colours. Here was my original block that I showed on Instagram:

Mine was rectangular, however, and the pattern is for square blocks. What to do? Head to EQ. (rhyme not originally intended) I drew the original Snow Goose block with five geese, not six as I had first tried, in EQ8 and started playing. A 16-block layout would yield a 40" quilt before borders. Oh MY, are there ever a ton of possible layouts. I settled on the one that had a sort of plus block with the geese swirling over it. Four black on the outside or four white? Another decision to be made. Black it was. I had fun throwing in several off-white patches to interrupt the starkness of the white, and to make you look again. Here's the flimsy:

The quilt gave me a few overnight sessions of 'letting it percolate' on the design wall before it was at the stage above. I had a brilliant idea to incorporate the (formerly ditched) purple goose into the final border. That meant I had to make eight purple sections, because there are eight aqua geese that touch the border. However, the plus sign shapes ended up not symmetrical, and although that is kind of a cool modern element, it bugged me a bit. So much that after a conference with MacGyver, who at first didn't notice anything, but then when I explained, yep it bugged him too, I took it all off, and did what I'd originally thought to do in EQ!

Done!

I already had known I would do dot-to-dot in the geese, and a circular themed quilting motif to mimic the way birds circle, looking for updrafts to help them fly farther faster on their way south or north.

Sidenote: I used to love watching sandhill cranes float in spires so high up they were hard to spot, and then suddenly, zoom! Off they'd go. I watched with joy in the spring, sadness in the fall. We were on their flightpath where we lived at the time, to the west of Edmonton, Alberta. Little did I know what amazement I would find one year in Florida when these birds outside our condo we had at the time woke me up around 7 am on a winter trip there with their strange bark/warble/cackle sounds. Those sounds are a LOT louder on the ground than a couple kilometres high in the air! Just listen for a moment:

Not only is the animal kingdom smart; it is absolutely incredible on so many levels, these cranes for one, with the great distances they migrate.

Anyhow. Back to my quilt. I wanted to accentuate the twirl I could see in the plus sections, but differentiate between the four black and the central white ones, so I simply quilted lines denser in the white.

Lots of Canada geese. No snow. Not good, as we usually have some that stays by now.

I spaced the black lines 1" apart and 1/2" in the white centre.  I also had the centre lines overlap. A double loop meander went in the other white areas of the quilt.

I quilted my initials as per usual in the lower corner.

Here's the back, another beautiful Island Batik fabric.

The quilting really shows up well, even in the the indoor lights.

More than the plus shapes that I first saw, the idea of circling birds, geese or cranes, stayed with me while I worked on this quilt. The dark shapes making me think of dark times in our lives, but we keep circling, looking for the thermal of rising air that will help us move on, and rise up out of the depths of despair or sadness. I do have a possible recipient in mind for this quilt.

The Jack Miner Bird Sanctuary in southwestern Ontario, founded in 1904, is a few minutes drive from our house, so I knew I’d take a couple of quilt shots there. Jack Miner was known as Wild Goose Jack, an American who made his home here in Canada and spent his life studying and protecting birds, so the quilt had to have a photo there.

The observation gazebo  is a recent addition

I had a lot, make that a bajillion, leftover triangles from making the geese, so I started stitching them back together to make… something or other. I can see makeup or project bags… However, I also made my own label for the quilt:

Quilt Stats:

Pattern: original design based on Snow Goose block by Villa Rosa Designs

Size: 42.5" x 42.5"
Fabric: Almost all Island Batik plus two or three others stash and leftovers

Batting: Pellon Nature's Touch cotton

Backing: Island Batik

Quilted: on Avril, 60 976 stitches

Threads: pieced with Fufus rayon; quilted with Robison-Anton rayon and Superior Threads So Fine! polyester. I used RA rayon in the bottom with the rayon on the top with beautiful results and no breaks; The Bottom Line with So Fine

Giveaway Information

Now for the TON of giveaways and what you have to do to enter! International entries welcome! 

Simply leave me one comment below telling me if you've ever made a Villa Rosa Designs quilt. Note that I won't be responding to comments due to the large volume during giveaways.

1. Each blogger on the hop gets to give away one complete set of the five patterns featured in the hop.

2. There are two Grand Prize Boxes overflowing with quilty goodness. Check out the photos at VRD blog. Every blogger will be selecting two people from their comments to enter that drawing.

3. Each blogger chooses three names from the comments on their blog to win one of the many other individual prizes such as books, prizes, precuts, notions, and more.

If you do the math, you will see that you have six chances at each blogger's post to win, so be sure to visit everyone and leave your comment! Also be sure if you are a no-reply or Anonymous, that you leave me your email address. Just write 'at' for @ and 'dot com' for .com

Prize registration closes next Sunday, January 29; winners will be selected during the first week of February and the prizes shipped out in February. If you are an international winner of the set of five, you will get digital copies of the cards, as I did! Saves paper and with the postcard-size instructions, it's easy to leave it on the laptop or iPad screen, larger than a postcard!😇

Sponsors

Here are the most generous sponsors:

Moda Fabrics

Hoffman International Fabrics

Timeless Treasures

Creative Grids

The Gypsy Quilter

Electric Quilt Company

Banyan Batiks by Northcott

Benartex Designer Fabrics

Quilts of Valor

Annie's Publishing

Participants

Here once more is the list of all the participants so you can visit them to see what they've created.

01/19/23 Thursday	Villa Rosa Quilts - be sure to visit - you can even win a finished QUILT!
01/20/23 Friday	From Bolt to Beauty  Kathleen McMusing  Jaftex Companies
01/21/23 Saturday	Pieceful Thoughts   Little Penguin Quilts
01/22/23 Sunday	Quilt with a View mmmquilts - that's me!
01/23/23 Monday	Cheryl’s Teapots 2 Quilting Devoted Quilter   Quilts of Valor Foundation
01/24/23 Tuesday	Needle and Foot Am I Shouting Yet? Electric Quilt
01/25/23 Wednesday	The Crafty Quilter Jo’s Country Junction Keepsake Quilting  Stitchin At Home
01/26/23 Thursday	Villa Rosa Quilts - Wrap Up!

Linking up

Quilty Girl

My Quilt Infatuation

From Bolt to Beauty

Quilting & Learning What a Combo

Confessions of A Fabric Addict

TGIFF at Gone Stitching