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Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Great Olympic Stories And How Quilting Plays A Part In The Olympic Spirit

While the 2012 Summer Olympics are over, I wanted to dedicate this post to every Olympian competitor, including those that competed in past Olympics. This includes Olympians from every country.  It doesn't matter if they won, as they were all winners by the fact that they competed and made it to the Olympics.  I also want to take this opportunity to share some examples of how quilting plays a part in the Olympics.

Did you know that there was a project to make  quilted pennants for the 2012 Olympics? A project was started in 2009 to help create quilted pennants to give to every athlete that participated in the 2012 Olympics.  Over 17,000 quilted pennants were donated and many were displayed at the Olympics. I hope this tradition carries forward to future Olympics!
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Marlene Oddie (KISSed Quilts) recently shared insights on her family ties to the Olympics, as well as sharing insights on a spectacular quilt she designed and created.  Like any Olympian, Marlene's story and this quilt need to be shared.  Thus, I was delighted when she approved my using a photo of her quilt with you today.  I do hope you'll take time to visit her wonderful blog and learning more about her ties to the Olympics.



There are actually a couple of posts on Kissed Quilts that you may want to read:
- Tutorial showing how she created this design in Electric Quilt/EQ7 software: http://kissedquilts.blogspot.com/2012/07/olympic-spirit.html
- Her family connection to the Olympics: http://kissedquilts.blogspot.com/2012/08/my-olympic-connection.html



Kelly Jackson (I Have A Notion) kept many of us entertained during the Olympics with some very talented Flamingos that had their own special Opening Ceremonies, various competitions, Awards Ceremonies and Closing Ceremonies.  I'm also delighted that Kelly approved my use of one of her photos of these Flamingo competitions.  Kelly's blog is full of fun and entertainment, as well as shares great tips, tutorials and more for quilters.  I hope you'll visit her blog and be entertained with the Flamingos and all of Kelly's fun blog posts.

Flamingo Beach Volleyball



Moda Fabrics Sponsored the Quilter's Olympics and you can find more insights on this fun event at the Moda Cutting Table.





The XXII Olympic Winter Games will take place in 2014 in Sochi, Russia.  The banner for the Winter Olympics 2014 has beautiful quilting motifs.  While you can find more info on this by searching the internet, I found a great post on by Michele Bilyeu (Heart and Hands) that shares insights that will certainly be interesting to quilters, so I hope you'll visit her wonderful blog to see her post on this topic.


What did you enjoy most about the summer Olympics, or did you hold your own quilt Olympics in your sewing room and not watch any of the competitions on tv?

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9 comments:

Jocelyn said...

Great post! And I hear that Kelly gave you my cyber hug :-) Hope you both had a great time together.

Gloria said...

Living in the UK we have lived and breathed the Olympics for anumber of years.
For me the sporting highlights were the gold medals won by Mo Farrah, Jessica Ennis and Usain Bolt.
Members of my quilt group made pennants and a friend's group made two quilts for 'A Gift of Quilts'. A book has been produced with a photo of each quilt and which team received it.

I believe it was at one of the US Olympics that quilts were first made and presented.

PS Designing the pennants was tricky as there were so many things we could not use for copyright reasons. This included the words London, 2012, Olympics, and images of the rings, official pictograms and the Olympic mascots.

Michele Bilyeu@ With Heart and Hands said...

Wonderful post and I loved learning even more than I had originally posted about it. Such fun! May the true Olympic spirit live on!!!

Ivory Spring said...

What a great post, Darlene! You outdid yourself on the content again! :)

Hugs.

Cheryl's Teapots2Quilting said...

I was piecing in front of the TV during the Olympics. I have a hand crank machine, and I could sew and listen to the commentators without the noise of a motor. I'd stop and watch during the events. Fun! I love the Olympics and try not to miss much.

Lucky Duck Dreams said...

I was on vacation for most of the Olympics but did get to watch the opening ceremonies live in Canada. I caught many great races when I returned and was inspired to make this quilt in 2 days http://cyarnell.blogspot.com/2012/08/olympic-craze.html

Jan Krentz said...

Jan Krentz here - only one of my books has been translated into a foreign language - and that is the Diamond Quilts & Beyond - translated into Russian.

I see a distinct infuence between my quilts and those for the 2014 Sochii Olympics theme!

Good for quilters world-wide, the upcoming theme!

Marlene @ KISSed Quilts . com said...

Thank you for including my story! So looking forward to the patchwork diamonds in Russia.

Valerija Mezhybovska said...

here's the first real quilt from my quilt friend from Russia - Anna Yakimova: http://foto.mail.ru/mail/yakimovaas/60/1859.html# I think it's only the beginning, there'll have to be much more quilts - and more complicated too, although this one is complicated enough already and still does not completely recembles the original pattern.