Biene's Summer Adventure Quilt - Block #1

Ever since I can remember I wanted a dog. As I was young I walked every dog in the neighbourhood but was never allowed to have one by myself.
As I got older life got too busy for a dog: university, high performance rowing, working full time, living abroad.
My dream has finally come true in December last year when we gave Biene a new home. 

So why is there a story about a dog on the blog today? I got inspired by Kitty Wilkin's beautiful lecture 'Quilts to mark milestones' at QuiltCon 2018 in Pasadena earlier his year. Kitty made quilt blocks of family adventures and brought them with her on hikes, boat rides and even flights. She documented the adventures with her beautiful photography on her blog here and here. Kitty brought her finished quilt top with her to the lecture and it was so beautiful to look at all those fun improv blocks that documented a whole summer.

After the QuiltCon lecture I immediately knew that I wanted to make my own 'Summer Adventure Quilt' marking adventures with Biene. This April we went on the first adventure that is also our first holiday with Biene to the North Sea in the Netherlands. 

There are endless sand beaches in 'Zeeland' and they are famous for the timber poles which break the waves in stormy weather.

The first quilt block was inspired by those poles in the sand. I improv pieced this block using only scraps. I took Kitty's advise and decided for a 15" height of this block and all coming blocks. The width will vary but 15" is the consistent height I'm aiming for.

The weather forecast was not the best so there is a bit of a grey cloud in the block as well.

It was too windy to hold the block up so I taped it down to the lovely timber huts that are all over the beach.

We had so much fun at the beach and Biene just did not tire of running after that ball.

Her whole face was covered in sand but that didn't seam to bother her.

Her floppy ears were going nuts with her speed and that wind. Isn't she beautiful?

 We got Biene to pose with the quilt block and the poles but she could hardly sit still, too excited!

The weather did improve after all and we had some really lovely sunny days.

If Biene wasn't playing ball she would dig holes.

Or dip her feet in the water.

I think she did have a lot of fun!

We all did actually! This is one rare selfie with the three of us where Biene did sit still for a couple of seconds...

I can't wait for our next adventure! And the next quilt block!

(I hope that weren't too many dog photos, but given the fact that I needed to wait for sooooo long to have a dog I think the amount of photos are in order. Quilty photos coming soon, I promise!)