Quilting Is a Gift

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Hello Farmgirl friends! Did you receive your latest MaryJanesFarm magazine and devour it yet? If so, how excited were you to read the articles on quilting? I absolutely loved the short story on page 23 titled The Gift of Quilting as it reminded me what a gift quilting has been to me as well.

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For me personally, quilting has been a friend to me for so many years. It has gotten me through hard times, easy times, sad days and happy days. Simple quilting projects that I can work on in the car or the plane always makes the miles more enjoyable. There is something very profound that happens as you pick the fabric, cutting and sewing carefully to form beautiful quilt blocks. When I hand quilt, there are so many thoughts that go through my mind. I like to think that the joy I feel in every stitch transfers those feelings into the quilt.

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I recently made a quilt for a very precious friend of mine; she is a relatively new friend (5 years!) but one of those women that the minute you meet, you just know it was meant to be. Bonnita and I have shared some hard things together the last two years… life things that are heartbreaking and leave you completely grief stricken. But we’ve also shared amazing and beautiful things. So when her birthday was approaching I was struggling to know what to give her that would express my thankfulness. Of course “a quilt” kept chanting in my head!

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Our tastes in color and style are completely opposite (which is so often the case with good friends!) and so I had to search further than my fabric stash to find just the right fabric for her quilt! I decided to focus on blues and grays and found a beautiful fabric line called Serenity Blues. It ended up being so perfect.

I chose a simple pattern called Lucky Log Cabin. It is made entirely of 2.5 inch strips sewn together and then cut into blocks, forming a unique Log Cabin block. It goes together very quickly, but looks difficult, which is always so nice!

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One of my favorite fabrics to use for backing on a quilt are vintage sheets. There are a few reasons for this. One is that they are large, so it isn’t necessary to piece them together to be large enough for the back of a large quilt. The second reason is that there is nothing softer than an old sheet! Sheets used to be made out of quality soft cotton fabric and after years of use it just gets softer. (You can find all kinds of beautiful vintage sheets on Etsy.) I managed to find a vintage Laura Ashley that I thought was absolutely perfect.

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I debated on hand quilting or machine quilting. As you can see in the above photo, I actually started a few lines of hand quilting to see how long it would take me! This was a very large quilt and I calculated about 100 hours of hand quilting! So… sadly, I pulled out the lines I had sewn and took to my sewing machine! Two days later, it was quilted! I marked lines about 1/2 inch apart on the front of the quilt using a disappearing ink pen which gives vivid blue lines to sew on. (They wash out easily.). And isn’t the back of this quilt amazing with all the beautiful quilting???

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I love to use a stripe fabric for a binding and this one really was perfect! It gives a complete different look; especially since this fabric is busy with florals.

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Once the binding was sewn on I went to work on a label. Do you label your quilts? I think it is very important to label them. There are so many amazing and beautiful quilts without labels; so we have no idea of their history. If nothing else it is nice to at least know the year they were made.

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I took a little trip to an antique store about an hour away in search of a vintage hankerchief (the best thing for labels in my opinion!). I found exactly what I needed and it made the most adorable label. I tested it out to make sure it would work the way that I envisioned….

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… and then I added some embroidered words. I cut it to fit exactly in the corner of the quilt and sewed it in under the binding.

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Lastly I would love to share some of the words I wrote in the card to my dear friend:

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I am so happy with the how the quilt came out and gifting it to my dear friend was such a treasure! Her tears of joy and excitement was perfect! She is not a quilter herself so she was beyond excited to own one made just for her! We all need a “comfort” quilt.

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Did you enter my giveaway from last month? If not, go to last month’s blog post here and enter to win one of three quilted hearts that I made!

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Until our gravel roads cross again… So long.

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Dori

Dori