50th Anniversary Quilt

Jerry and Ellie Green

This was a group effort by about a half a dozen sisters in our hall. The idea was suggested to have an anniversary party for them and to make them a gift. So of course the next step was 'can we put pictures on a quilt', well of course you can! So Debbie was stealth enough to get some pictures of both of them as a child and a wedding picture. She already had a picture of them taken a few months ago so that was handy. Debbie is our congregation's 'memory keeper' so she has pictures of everybody. ;) So we spent a Friday evening and set up a assembly line. I playing foreman and did the planning. Jess and Debbie did the cutting, Aunt Peg did the pinning, Cindy did the sewing...DJ brought the pizza. By the end of the first evening we had the blocks put together. Cindy came back over a few days later and we put the blocks together and added the borders. It took me an entire day to do the quilting on it because it was very detailed. Full custom and attaching the binding. I was hoping to get it all done a few days before the party but alas, I was up until midnight stitching the binding and then I added the label and threw it into the washer before I left for the meeting on Sunday morning. When I got home from the meeting, I dried and wrapped it while backing a cake to take to the gathering. Overall, I think that for a bunch of 'non-quilters' it came out great...and I think they really liked it which is always a bonus!

Lisa's Quilt

A custom made quilt for the best neighbor in the world!

A few months back, our neighbor Lisa came over for dinner. As this always turns out, we ended up spending most of the evening in my quilting studio talking about fabric and looking at patterns. This turned into a deal or making a quilt for her bed. She said she wanted 'autumn tones'. About a week later, I made a pilgrimage to Maryjo's Cloth Shop in Gastonia, the store I affectionately refer to as my 'happy place'. I wasn't even really thinking about this quilt when I went there but I am in the habit of carrying around patterns for quilts that are in the 'need to make' category. This quilt is called Autumn in New England. I was strolling down one of the hundreds of isles of fabric and this print just screamed at me. I mean it was like the bolt of fabric literally jumped off the rack and rolled around in front of me. It was PERFECT!!! So I took a picture with my phone and texted it to Lisa asking what she thought. She was like 'it's ok, but I don't know'. So I thought, maybe I will wait until  we can go shopping together and she can pick out her fabric so I know she will like it. Then I looked at the fabric some more and decided...if she doesn't like it, I will keep it for myself or sell it. It was just too great not to buy. So then I had to find things to go with it. It didn't take me long to know that this border fabric was crying for some Fairy Frost Fabric! Luckily for me, Mary Jo's carries every shade of FF in the collection! All 130+ shades. I chose a beautiful shade of blue, a sort of olive green and a shade of orange that all complemented this amazing border fabric. The rest just sort of came together. So that is the beginning of the story of how this huge quilt came to be.

Update: Lisa's quilt is now in it's new home:

I quilted the heck out of this quilt! Took me DAYS and miles of thread (literally, about 3000 yards with equates to about 1.7 miles). Each block is quilted with a sort of paisley pattern and there is separate quilting in each of the three borders. Once the quilting was finished, I decided that I would use this quilt to display at the Mountain Piecemakers Quilt Guild's 2010 Quilt Show. It got a pretty good response. Once gentleman even reportedly asked about the maker and where he could get one.  Once I got it back home, I removed the hanging sleeve and wrapped it up all pretty with a big red bow.

I think marched on over to Lisa's house foolishly thinking that she would be inside and clean enough to handle this baby. I don't know why I would ever think that. She is the single hardest working woman I have ever met. She doesn't believe in 'inside work'. She is forever cutting, pulling, trimming, mulching, planting or building SOMETHING. I should have listened  to the man and had her over for dinner and given it to her then. Dinner with Lisa always involves wine and alot of laughing and of course, it tends to be the only time we see her without work gloves and mud on. This is why we love her, also why she deserves a yummy quilt. She took a pic of it on her bed and sent it to me.