It was ten years ago in May when I officially started For Quilts Sake and registered to collect and pay sales tax. I had no idea where it was going to go when I started. I've made over 500 quilts (you can read about that milestone in
this blog post from last year), sold quilts all across the country (and a few to other countries), sent quilts to be exhibited across the country (
Sisters, Oregon was the farthest in 2010),
won awards,
led workshops, held trunk shows, and been
featured in magazines.
The quilt above,
"Rainbow Pinwheel," was made shortly before I officially started and I consider it one of my first true art quilts; the 35 that came before it were based much more on traditional designs. Since I started the blog in 2009, I haven't had a chance to share this quilt with you.
"Rainbow Pinwheel" features nine large cream-colored pinwheel blocks and each pinwheel block had a smaller, rainbow-colored block inside it (pieced, not appliqued, which is probably how I'd do it if I were making this quilt now).
Each of the colored bars in the inner border has a quilting line of the same color that connected to the same color on one of the smaller pinwheels. (I spent a long time with a paper sketch figuring out where to put the quilting lines so they wouldn't all randomly end up in the same place!)
At both ends of that quilting line is a glass bead of the same color. And everywhere the quilting lines met, I added a clear bead, like a prism splitting the white light into color.
One of the things that I love about the photo at the top of the post is that it was taken with the sun behind the quilt, giving it a stained glass feel. This quilt is in a private collection.
