"Jersey Girls" for the Quilt Alliance

Every year the Quilt Alliance hosts a contest/fundraiser, where people create 16" X 16" quilts around the theme for the year.  The quilts are auctioned off after winners are selected by a panel of judges, and tremendous prizes given!

I have loved making these quilts over the years, and have learned a lot from them as they are small enough to free me up for great experimentation.  For a detailed overview of my Alliance quilts, check out this post on their blog for lots of process and pictures:

https://quiltalliance.wordpress.com/2013/05/11/growing-quilts-harvesting-support/

This year's theme is "Animals We Love".  The contest rules are here.  You still have time to enter!  Deadline is May 1.

Most of you know I spent ten years as a dairy farmer and I still love Jersey calves the best...I miss them!
So I loved making this quilt, "Jersey Girls", because I could look down on their sweet faces the whole time I stitched.

I started by printing up a photo and playing around with the lay-out.  Those white flowers were crocheted for me by my daughter-in-law, Esther, for Christmas.  I really love them and had to use them.

The antique block was perfect, cut in half, to make part of the frame.
I ended up using the lace a different way, though.

Here we are midway through. I've quilted around the calves' faces before appliqueing the photo to the background fabric and surrounding it by trim.
Those little green dots you see are stuffed velvet circles...

...that became the centers of silk ribbon flowers, made with 13mm RiverSilks.  I had to really restrain myself on the frame, not overdoing it or making the colors too bright.  I wanted all the attention to be on those darling girls.

This was a quick 3 day project...you don't have to always spend a lot of time to realize your vision..or enter the contest!