A Quilt For Grace

Grace is getting married. Grace is one of the first people we met when we arrived in Ellensburg. I asked Grace’s Mom if anyone was making her a wedding quilt. We quilters are sort of careful about stepping on other quilter’s toes. Grace’s Mom was delightfully enthusiastic, which was music to my ears. Warm earth tones were my guidelines.

Grace has been a true friend to My Girl and to us. I sent this photo to My Girl from the back of the quilt store and received a thumbs up, so I trotted to the cashier and paid for the lot.

I wanted to make a quilt like this. Pat Sloan the quilter is great at making patterns and horrible at assigning photos to them, so I can’t easily share a photo with you.

I cut blocks. I sewed them together. I didn’t like them. I spent a night ‘unsewing’.

I sewed more blocks. I didn’t like them. I spent another night ‘unsewing’.

Now I had lots of small blocks and the quilt store was an hour away. I needed to make what I had work, so I turned most of my small blocks into 3.25 inch squares like this.

Number Two Son came for dinner and was drug into my sewing room to help me at my design wall. Together we formed a bit of a plan…and then we ate ribs.

To tell you the truth, this was a hard quilt to design and it did take a lot of time. I don’t really set out to make ‘easy’ ones, because the work is part of the gift.

Getting the squares from the design wall to the sewing machine is the easiest place to screw the whole thing up. I move and sew only 16 squares at a time and watch it come alive.

From bigger squares to rows..

Bad British word!

If you ever are given a quilt that is ‘perfect’, you probably got a machine made one or at least not one made by me. The Amish always put in an error because they say only God is perfect. (I don’t actually ‘have’ to put one in, they just show up.)

I get it laid out on THE Table that My Loving Spouse made to begin pinning the quilt. I actually do not enjoy this stage. I guess because I am afraid of messing it all up. If one uses a long arm quilter, they get to skip this part.

This is the largest quilt I have ever quilted on my Janome. The quilt was so big, I’ll be honest, it was hard. Of course, I do eventually get it done or I wouldn’t be writing this post.

Besides the opportunity to be creative and give a gift of love, the sincere encouragement I get from My Loving Spouse over my projects reminds me, that I am very, very blessed.