date stamp quilt

My friend Cheryl has a beautiful new book out called "You Inspire Me To Quilt". It's a collaborative book all about using someone else's idea for a quilt design rather than your own. It's a brilliant concept and I love that it's so much more than a book of quilt patterns. It's also about the process of getting to that final design. (It's so true to Cheryl's approach to quilting!) I love that it tells the story behind each and every quilt!

I designed a quilt for the book called Date Stamp. This quilt, however, was my husband's idea. He NEVER has a shortage of ideas...quilt or otherwise. In fact, I may wince a little bit when he starts off a sentence with "you know what would be cool....." I really do love that he has so many ideas-I just wish I had more time! :) ANYway, he thought it would be neat to make a quilt that looked like a clock radio, but instead of the time, use someone's birth date. He had this idea years ago, but I never caught the vision. It's so hard to make a quilt based on an outside idea rather than an internal one. In fact, I find it nearly impossible to start a quilt unless I have the vision for it. One day, when we were watching the movie Groundhog Day, about the 3rd or 4th time they showed an alarm clock scene, the birth date/clock radio quilt idea finally clicked in my head. (Finally!) It was so cool to have a vision for the quilt that my husband had mentioned so many years before! Never mind that I was already working on a different quilt design for Cheryl's book. I emailed her and I switched gears almost immediately.

This quilt isn't girly AT ALL, and I found that to be quite challenging. The colors are not my normal "go-to" colors, either. It was out of my comfort zone on so many levels. But, a few different times while I was working on it, my boys would come downstairs and exclaim how cool it was and that encouragement really helped! It definitely has some "guy" appeal, which was/is reassuring.

The instructions for this quilt include assembly for all the numbers, so you can use any date that you wish, not just my husband's birthday. Handy, I know! Also, I feel like I should mention that this quilt is big! It finishes at 98" x 72", but based on the numbers you choose, the size will vary. I love that the pattern is so customizable.

The best part of this quilt story is when the quilt came back home. The physical quilt traveled from to my house to Canada, then to California, back to Canada and then back to my house. It was gone almost a year in all. It arrived here the day after my husband's birthday...the same day that he returned from a pretty stressful work trip. The timing was perfect! I used the quilt to wrap up/disguise his new Taylor guitar that I bought him for his birthday. He was quite surprised by all of it, which was delightful for me and my kids. I couldn't have planned it better if I had tried. I do love a happy ending!

I have an extra copy of the book that I would love to give away. If you would like a chance to win it, please leave me a comment on this post. Please be sure to include your location (country is fine) because I will pick one winner from the US, who will win a hard copy, and one winner from outside the US, who will win a digital copy of the book. Please, only one comment per person. Thanks for reading! And happy Tuesday! :)