Next, I designed the quilt pattern (or in this case, patterns)

Every quilt starts out with an idea on paper. Whether the final product will look anything like the idea is anyone's guess. So here is "Road to California,"an art quilt for my two California kids. Jamie is originally from Illinois and Jeff was born in Michigan so separately, they found their way to sunny California to make a new life. Jeff arrived as a kid in grade school, Jamie followed him much later after meeting him on vacation in Lake Tahoe.



The quilt block, Road to California has many different variations so I have decided to incorporate those many blocks into one quilt. In addition, I found a star pattern called "California Constellation" which I plan to place in the upper right corner. On the left side of the quilt (west as you are looking at it) will be an ocean wave block to represent the Pacific and gold and green mountains for the hills around their home in Livermore, which are gold or green depending on the season.

It takes more than the original drawing though to plan a quilt. Many more drawings must me made in a quilt such as this with so many different kinds of block work going on.












Nothing is simple, is it?