As a sidebar, one of my favorite children’s stories is “Love You Forever” by Robert Munsch.  What brings this to mind is one of the repeating phrases in this book about a baby growing up: “And he grew and he grew and he grew.” So this special quilt is also the story of the quilt that grew.

Of course the reason I was thrilled to do the binding was more than just feeling like I was rescuing it from the UFO pile and getting it into Linda’s brother’s hands (for whom it was made). Rather I loved the feeling of totally completing the project and bringing it full circle. I guess you could say I helped this quilt grow up and enter its new life in her brother’s home. Okay, rather sappy, but still….

As I mentioned, this is a special quilt for me. Should you be getting ready to begin your own longarm quilting business, my recommendation to you is find a friend with a quilt, especially one with a few challenges and one that will help ease your fears about taking that first scary step and working on someone else’s project.

I may be getting the details wrong, but the story goes something like this:  Linda got the Laurel Burch panel from the fabric line called “Mythical Horses“. She decided to make a small lap quilt or wallhanging for her brother and sister-in-law who loved horses. Well, she got the top made and her brother asked if she couldn’t make it a bit bigger. So she added a border and made into a small couch quilt. But her brother said, oh no, we really want to put it on our bed, can’t you make it bed size?  So…. 9 borders later, Linda finished the quilt and I was just getting ready to take my first “real” customer.  At which point, Linda handed the quilt to me and said, “Take it, do what you want with it, I absolutely hate this quilt.” The only design suggestion she had was if I had some horses I could add somewhere (yes, I did — they are in the outer border). Now, the quilt is lovely and she was so creative with her many borders, I’m sure the hate was more because it grew beyond what she’d envisioned when she started.  Such are many things in life, eh?

The reason I suggest you find a similar friend or project is that this quilt had absolutely every type of quilting experience for me to test my fledgling skills on.  I was petrified at the possibility of ruining a customer’s quilt and yet Linda took that fear away, because yes, she kept reassuing me that she really did hate this quilt and there was nothing that I could do that would do anything but improve it.

So here are the skills this quilt allowed me to learn:

• I did mention nine (9) borders right?
• The center panel was free-motion around all the motifs and between them (see the photos below — all the horses are outlined and free motion inside)
• The backing was pieced with strips down the middle, so I had to be sure to center it on the frame
• Because she gave me full rein, so to speak, I was able to be creative with all the border designs and match them to the feel of Greece or Egypt
• One of her border styles was a raised piece so I needed to do some straight top stitching to be sure it was held down
• I did stitch-in-the-ditch around many of the borders and the center panel
• Sorry to say with all those borders, this was not a very square quilt, so I had to figure out how to deal with that, especially once I got to the bottom
• I had to use two different thread colors on the top (a sage-y green for the center and rust elsewhere) with rust in the bobbin — thus dealing with tension issues and making sure I didn’t have too much pin-dotting
• It has several small and medium cornerstones and other blocks which needed stand-alone designs as well

Of course I probably would do things entirely different were I to do this quilt now. But then again, maybe it wouldn’t turn out so nice.

So here are some shots of the quilt. I think you’ll agree, Linda did an awesome job and I’m sure her brother and sister-in-law will enjoy this quilt for many years to come.

Happy quilting, and may all your “babies” grow and grow and grow into everything you want them to be.

~ Kathy

This is also a good time for me to jump in and remind everyone to support their local quilt shop. Yes, I succumb occasionally to shopping online — its good to support those folks too.  But too many neighborhood quilt stores are being hit awfully hard by the economy.  And where would we be if we couldn’t compare fabrics side-by-side or worst, not be able to feel their texture or see their quality.  Plus you get to meet a bunch of really great people and have the opportunity in most cases to get classes you’d never see anywhere else.

So back to my local shop.  It happens to be the Quilt Patch in Tecumseh and the class I took was called “Raw Edge Mosaic”. The instructor is Barb Cey and she makes the most awesome lifelike wallhangings. She has a couple of techniques. One is her landscape class.  I started to try to learn that but while I loved her art, I just didn’t fall in love with the process (I think I’m a little too analytical for it or something).  Her animals though — wow! Here’s one of hers:

Isn’t he just way too cute?  She also has started selling some of her patterns at the Quilt Patch.  You can call them for more information:  517-423-0043. Barb tells me she will someday have her own website but until then call the shop and they’ll help you. And yes, this guy is one of the patterns she sells!

And here’s what I’m working on.  This isn’t what Barb had for the class project (I admit, I’m a bit of a rogue), but it’s her technique 100%.  I couldn’t have even attempted this on my own.  This is my shih tzu, Berry. To create the “pattern” I took a photograph of him, pulled it into Photoshop Elements, posterized the photo to get better areas to outline and then took the pencil tool and drew in a lined pattern.   I think the pattern looks a lot like what you see when you get a paint-by-number, don’t you?

I printed the pattern out to be about 21″ x 27″ and then got to have lots of fun with fusible and batiks.

This is what I’ve got so far. I think it looks like him, don’t you? I still need to do the free-motion quilting but that is what Barb is going to cover on Tuesday.  Doesn’t this just make you want to take her class too?

Happy Quilting!

~Kathy