Robert's Quilt

Would you like to see another one? I've been doing some cleaning/organizing and finally came across these pictures. This one is the quilt I made for Terri's oldest son, Robert. His birthday was in July, and our Traverse retreats were always in September, so I'm thinking he must have been a few months old before he got it.



I can't quite see what Barb is diligently working on here, but it's hard to not notice that our attire for these retreats is pretty casual.

Robert looks like he was pretty happy to finally get his quilt. I'm not sure, but I think this picture may have been taken at a Christmas get-together at Dennis and Julie's. Is that the last time we were all together in the same place?

Robert turned 8 this year and was pretty happy to have his younger brother start kindergarten and ride the school bus with him.

He looks so grown up since the last time I saw him. I'm really looking forward to seeing Terri and her boys next weekend when we'll all be downstate for Kevin's wedding.

Terri's Quilt

My daughter Terri assembled this quilt top when she was still living at home -- more than 15 years ago, closer to 20 I'd guess. She left it behind when she moved out and I promised to quilt it for her. So. . . . . for close to 20 years, I slowly worked on it. Some years it never came out of the closet. Other years I'd pull it out determined to finish it and plan how many hours I'd have to work on it each week to finish it in that year. I finally shipped it off to her last year.

I certainly hope my current project doesn't take that long.

I got lazy when I reached the borders and resorted to machine quilting.

It ended up being a very cozy quilt. It sure kept me warm for many winter months while I stitched on it.

Quilting Therapy

Most of my recent quilt finishes have been by machine, and I've been itching to get back to some hand quilting. I also wanted to try some hand quilting with a wool batt because I've heard so much about how much more smoothly the process goes. Everything I heard is true -- hand quilting with a wool batt is dreamy. This is just what I need to relax me through the winter months while I fantasize about next winter when I will no longer have to get up four mornings a week and head to work.

The quilt is quite large -- 80 x 80. It was made from fabric purchased at a quilt retreat a few years back. The challenge was to make something using a Jacob's Ladder pattern with fabric purchased at the retreat. I wanted something large, but didn't have the patience to make too many Jacob's Ladder blocks. Although you can't see any in this photo, there is one in each row.
When it's all quilted I'll share a better picture.

I didn't have floor space large enough to lay this out for basting, so I cheated and sent it to a local long arm quilter (Ann Made Quilts) and let her baste it for me.

Here's the start of my quilting. I look forward to finding out how long it takes to quilt the whole thing, so this blog entry was needed to record the starting point. I picked my favorite quilting pattern -- the Baptist Fan.

Hodgepodge

My sister came back from 10 days of vacation grumbling because I haven't blogged for awhile. I've been busy with more of the same, which didn't seem too interesting to blog about.

I did find some copper metallic thread and continued with my Christmas decoration project. I'm beginning to understand why some stitchers have more than one sewing machine. I'm itching to get back to some quilting projects and wishing I had another machine so that I could do both at the same time.



My brother Jim celebrated another birthday a few days ago and I completely forgot to wish him a happy birthday. He's the one on the right -- in his younger days. Belated Wishes Jim!

And the one on the left in the photo below is getting married later this month. Gets me all choked up thinking about it. The one on the right will be standing in the wedding -- it'll be fun to see him and his family, which is larger than it was the last time I saw them.

Just to add a little quiltiness -- I think this may be the third quilt I made. I have lots of good memories of working on this quilt. Anyone recognize the baby?

No -- you won't win a quilt if you guess correctly.