Thank you all for the Summer Stash Challenge

The Summer Stash Challenge is finally over. These flowers are for all of you who spent this summer with Eileen and me, making beautiful quilts from your stash. The yellow iris was blooming in June, when the challenge started and we started getting names on a list we never expected to make.




During the summer months we learnt to know talented women from many parts of the world, joined together by their hobby of quilting and their love for fabrics. These peonies were picked in July, when the most quilts were being made.





And finally came August with these begonias. The last quilts were being stitched and bound, even in the last hours of August 31st. It has been a joy to follow the process of nearly 40 quilts being transformed from a pile of fabric or even a pile of old clothes to a beautiful quilt. Some quilts were sewn by professionals, at least one - my sister Maija's - was the first quilt to be finished. She didn't quite make it by the time limits, but I will encourage her to finish the quilt anyway, and to start her own blog. Her blog will not be the only one started because of this challenge, so I think we all can be proud of ourselves for inspiring these lovely women to both sewing and to blogging about it. A good example is all that is needed, and at least I have seen such good examples of lovely quilts that I don't know where I'm going to find the time to make my version of them.

Today I have been bouncing in and out the blogs and trying to find the post where the completed quilt was shown. I changed the links on the Summer Stash Challenge list on my right sidebar to link to that post. I know some of you have finished more than one quilt for the challenge, and if you feel I have linked to the wrong one, please email me the link you want to be used. In some cases I couldn't find a post telling about the finished quilt, so I linked to the finished top shown. Any one of you who has not joined the SSC Flickr group and would like to show her challenge quilt in the company of the other challenge quilts, please contact me or Eileen.

With these flowers from my garden I want to thank you all for quilting with Eileen and me, it has been a great experience. And no, we are not planning another challenge ;o ! Not yet, at least. Why don't you host the next one? We knew nothing about hosting a challenge when we started, but we have learnt a lot. And last but not least my heartfelt thanks to Eileen, you carried the heavier load, and without you I couldn't have done my share.