Bloggers' Quilt Festival: Four-Patch Parrots

I may be new to blogging, but I'm well-acquainted with happenings in the quilting blogosphere!  This weekend is the Houston Quilt Market, which leads up to the Houston International Quilt Festival.  In honor of the Festival, Amy at Amy's Creative Side began hosting an online quilt festival for bloggers.  It's an opportunity for blogging quilters to share their quilts and inspire others to creativity.

For my first-ever Bloggers' Quilt Festival entry, I offer some Four-Patch Parrots.  This is a happy quilt for me, not only because of the bright colors, but because it was all my creation!

The quilt began as simply an experiment with making stack & whack style 4-patch blocks.  There are a number of patterns and tutorials on creating this type of block, so I did some Google studying then raided my stash for some likely fabric.  I came up with some tropical parrot fabric and had a blast cutting and positioning the parrots in kaleidoscopic fashion.  

Before long, I had a stack of 4-patch blocks in search of a quilt.  Back to the stash for some coordinating candy-colored solids. Then more studying to figure out the cutting dimensions for the square-in-a-square blocks and the HST border.  This is the final result as it hung on my design wall.

My quilting collaborator, Annie, came up with a swirly quilting pattern and used a multi-colored thread on the top.  The quilting really complimented all the crazy birds!

The quilt backing and binding came from the stash, too.  (How all those tropical birds got in the stash in the first place is a story for another day!)  I love snuggling with this quilt on winter days - all that color and those mixed-up birds brighten any dreary day!

Thanks for stopping by to see my quilt and I hope you are inspired by all of the fantastic quilts in the festival!