Quilt: Grandma's Dream

This is the only quilt I'll get done this week - took me 3 long days to quilt it. It's huge, 108" x 103", and all those little squares are 1 1/2 inches! Louise was commissioned to piece this for someone and then it was brought to me to quilt it. (Louise said it should have been named "Grandma's Nightmare"!) She told me how many hours it took her to put it together and I can't remember now what it was, but tons and tons of hours. It is a beautiful quilt though, a real keepsake.

Close up of applique blocks

I FINALLY took pictures of my quilt that I ribboned with at our local show. Been meaning to for some time and just never managed to get it done until today. There are 22 pictures here - so if you go cross-eyed looking at them, imagine what I was like after quilting it all!! I'm really tickled with how these turned out, and I completely hope that a year from now I will look back on these and think "ewwww!" That's what I think about my projects from a year ago, so hopefully I'll continue to grow in my abilities and next summer be so much better than I am now. Some day I hope I can actually take a class on longarm quilting - I'll probably learn I'm doing everything wrong!!

Eileen's signature quilt

I touched on this a couple of weeks ago (titled Undercover Quilt). I can now post on this because the quilt has been delivered and the secret is out. I have a dear dear friend, Eileen. We've been friends since high school. We sang together in a quartet, then a trio, then by college we were a duet. We were in a performing ballroom dance group together - and many musical productions. Seems like we were constantly singing or dancing somewhere together! We married men who were best friends. She was one of my bridesmaids. We've kept close over all these years even though she moved to Iowa and I've been in Idaho and Utah. Eileen is one of those angel on earth people, truly one of the sweetest people you could ever meet. The past few years she's been battling cancer. The last year has been particularly hard on her and her family. Another good friend from those many years ago, Abby, and I reconnected again recently because of what Eileen is going through. We came up with the idea of making a signature quilt to give to Eileen. Abby took over the job of contacting family members and as many friends as she could get who has loved Eileen over these past 30+ years and have them sign fabric pieces and get them all back to me so I could make the quilt. Abby came and picked up the completed quilt last week and flew to Iowa where she delivered it to our sweet friend this past weekend. This first picture has Abby on the left, Eileen in the middle and Eileen's sister, Annie, on the right. We also came up with the idea of making a scrapbook. People were encouraged to send photos and or notes back (along with their signed fabric piece) to put into a book - Abby compiled all of that.

Here's a photo of the entire quilt after I got it finished.

There were 311 leaves signed by friends. (I only managed to get about 10 of them upside down, geez!!)

Family members were in the flower garden under the tree.

In case you can't quite read it, the heart says "Joe + Eileen". The butterflies are Joe's parents and Eileen's parents, flying over the family garden.

Just a corner quilting detail. I learned a new technique on this quilt. I machine embroidered around each piece with my longarm, thus securing everything down and quilting at the same time. Worked great!

Abby and I were bugs in the garden - she was a lady bug (didn't get a closeup of that, but she's easy to find because she's red and there are only 3 red things in the whole quilt.) Here is my snail.

This has been in the works for maybe 5 months and with as many people who have known about it, can you believe that Eileen never had a clue it was going on? Way to keep a secret everyone!!! I made the quilt to fit their queen sized bed, but have learned they've elected to hang it on a wall that is visible as you enter their front door. What a sweet experience it has been. Thank you Abby for all your help and work. We love you Eileen.

Eagle Scout Quilt

This was my project for this week. I had to treat this quilt like a whole cloth, so I came up with the idea of a large circle in the center and rays shooting out from that (which meant I had to order a special tool for marking that kind of design.) Worked really well and I'm happy with the end project. I'm eager for the quilt owner to see this - she really didn't know how she wanted it quilted, just needed it done.

Bull's Eye Quilt

This is the largest quilt I've quilted to date, it's 100 x 120 - when I had to turn it the long way on my machine to do the last two borders, it almost didn't fit! This quilt belongs to my daughter, Tara. It was a quilt block swap that she decided she wanted to participate in (and then asked me if I'd do it for her! :) ) I was happy to! I'd never made one of these before, so it was fun. The edges of the circles are raw, which was different, and because the circle segments are done by different people, they don't all match, but after doing a little research I learned that's part of the design element, so I quit stressing over it! It'll be fun to see this quilt later down the road when the circles have had a chance to fray and fuzz up a bit! Hope she's happy with the finished project!

That looks like a tuck in the backing fabric on the above picture, but it isn't! As a side note, this is the second quilt that I applied the binding with my longarm - works great! A heck of a lot easier than struggling with such a large quilt on my regular sewing machine!

3-D Pinwheel baby quilts

I quilted these for Louise who was teaching a class on making these DARLING baby quilts, and also one for Nancy who took the class! Love, love, love these!