Sunday, September 16, 2012

Quilt your fingers to the bone what do you get? Boney fingers!






It's been a busy, busy summer!  In early July I was hired by Dolly, from my guild, to hand quilt a lap/wall size quilt of hers.  It was about 48-ish" square.  I was hoping to get it done in 2.5 weeks, it took a few days longer due to the summer heat, but finally got it done and returned to her. With cream colored thread I quilted in the ditch around each heart and along the blue strips, then a 1" cross-hatch in the backgrounds of the heart blocks.


 
Right around that time I had heard on the news that chef Anthony Sedlak had passed away suddenly.  I had watched his cooking show on tv a few times but didn't actually know him or anything.  I've been volunteering at Canuck Place for a few months now and it turns out that his mother is a semi-retired nurse there.  The staff at the hospice wanted to do something for her, to show that they care and are thinking of her.  One of the girls in the office, Jen, does some machine work and decided to make a tree quilt and have the leaves signed by the other nurses and close friends.   She did a great job machine appliqueing the tree, leaves, and a few birds to the background.  Then she handed it off to me and I hand quilted radiating hearts.  I used a beige/tan variegated thread and just quilted the hearts freehand.  It took a total of 115 hours to quilt it ... the background was a beautiful batik, a little stiff as batiks tend to be, but so very pretty and looks great with the batik leaves in blues, greens, and tans.  I handed it off to Jen last week, she'll do the binding and then they'll present it.  I think she'll be very touched when she sees all the encouraging words and notes everyone wrote on the leaves.   

I had started hand quilting a king size for Wendy, also from my guild, just before I got the tree quilt to do.  Took a bit of a break from it to do the tree, so now that it's done I'm back to Wendy's.  She needs it back in time to get it bound and ready to go in our guild's bi-annual quilt show in October.  I think I have it about 1/3 to 1/2 done, it should be ready in another couple of weeks.  It's a scrappy red pattern on scrappy neutrals, so very pretty and fun to quilt.  I'll post some pictures of it once I'm done.

Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to quilt I go!  Until next time ....