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© 2011 by hs

These past months, I have undertaken a joyful and satisfactory journey. On various occasions, I have come across Baltimore Album quilts. I love these flowery appliqué patterns very much. I surfed the internet all over for those truely grand quilts. And as I dug into the subject deeper and deeper, I came across many marvellous examples of this traditional fabric art.

Then one day, I took a piece of white print fabric out of my stash. I found me some green prints and began with a narrow bias strip. I made myself an oak leaf template out of cardboard, and soon leaves in various greens grew on my bias strip stem. I did not exactly copy a pattern I had seen in the internet. Rather, I used several similar Baltimore quilt blocks as an inspiration for my own version of an oak leaf wreath.

After that, I started a second block which featured another wreath, this time with plain leaves and berries. And after that, I made a third, and a forth. Soon enough, it became evident that I was in the middle of sewing a really big album quilt of my own. Twentyfive (five times five) blocks came into being, me never knowing what the next would look like while sewing the present.

My album quilt surely has nothing to do with Christmas (though the red and green colours do fit in very well). Yet, I had the idea of using it as an online Advent Calendar. Twentyfive blocks—the idea suggests itself, doesn’t it!

Now, I invite you to a happy pre-Christmas time—waiting for Christ, preparing for his coming, reading some texts that help us understand and concentrate on the matter—and all the while enjoying each day another album block.

And in case you ask yourself what I am sewing in the Advent season: I am busy appliqueing the four outer borders of the album quilt.