Hoe-Down

The challenge fabric in 2011 was full of cartoon farm animals staring straight ahead. I was working on my entry on Quilting Thursday at the Harrogate chapel when two sisters visited from York. They said the print looked like the view from the pulpit on Sunday. I wish I’d used their idea for my design. Instead I ‘fussy cut’ the fabric into triangles for nine kaleidoscope blocks. I put pink pigs in the southwest, black sheep in the northwest, brown horses in the northeast and Holstein cows in the southeast. I used a contrasting print with red roosters for the center block and an inner border. You can’t see it in this photo, but the background fabric is full of printed animal sounds like oink, cluck and moo. I quilted it with nautilus whorls and hearts. It looked like a barnyard square dance to me, so I named my quilt after the fifth and final segment of Aaron Copland’s ballet, Rodeo.