the goose loves the elm creek quilt books

Slowly but surely, I'm working on all those goals on my 25 for 25 list. I'm down to about 4.5 months, but have lots of things still to do!

One goal that I didn't start tackling until 2012 was reading 25 books. Yeah, I really gotta catch up there. I got a great head start when I travelled to Santa Monica, CA for a business trip, though - plenty of airport/plane/hotel time to get through a few books. I started with The Aloha Quilt, by Jennifer Chiaverini.

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I'm not going to go into great detail here, but maybe enough to get you to read it. Jennifer Chiaverini has a whole series about "Elm Creek Quilts," a group of ladies that formed a quilt camp together. The books take you through the various challenges and joys of their lives, and always describe the quilts that the ladies are working on that tie in with the story. Sounds cheesy, yeah. But they're awesome feel-good stories that keep you engaged and wanting more.

I read several books from the series when I was in high school, but the quilting terms never meant much to me. Now that I'm best friends with my sewing machine, I can appreciate the concepts and challenges of each quilt they work on.

In this story, a lady travels to Maui to start a quilt camp, and learns how to quilt in the Hawaiian style. I didn't even know they had a style! Below is a real-life version of the quilt that the lady worked on in the book. In the Hawaiian style, the quilters make their own patterns by folding cloth several times, drawing patterns, cutting it out, and then opening it up. It's like hardcore snowflake making.

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 So go read the book. Or not. But at least I'm checking off my list, one book at a time.