A Prairie Home Quilts

Grandma’s Dream Quilt for Rachelle

This quilt is my first-ever quilt. I have always admired quilts, old and new, and have wanted to learn to make them since the early ’80s. I’ve sewn and enjoyed handwork since I was a little girl. My grandmother showed me how to sew and embroider. Finally, in the summer of 2003, a DF showed me how to get started with this quilt project. (Thank you, Cindy! How many times have we discussed this obsession we’ve acquired??) I started out making it for myself, but DD Rachelle wanted it. I thought at some point I’d switch the color scheme of my room to something other than burgundy and green so eventually I said she could have it when I got it done even though my room is still burgundy and green. Little did she know that it would take more than 3 years to complete. [sigh]

I completed most of the work on it in 2003, getting all the blocks together probably by early 2004, but I didn’t get the top completely put together until late 2005 and sandwiched until early 2006. As a side note: I should explain that our house was on the market from October 2004 through October 2005 and I really didn’t have an opportunity to do much quilting during that time. From the summer of 2005 (when it looked like our house might finally be sold) until now, I’ve been feeding my obsession by starting numerous other projects! LOL And, of course, hand quilting takes some time. That’s where I was with it at the end of 2006.

So now it’s 2007… Hopefully, Rachelle will forgive her mother for finishing a quilt for *everyone* else but her and I’ll get this done in 2007. She has asked me to machine quilt it–probably thinking it’s the only way I’ll get it done in my lifetime, at this point! LOL Right now, it’s sitting on a quilt frame in the living room where it goes very well with the decor but soon I’m going to take apart the quilt sandwich and throw it on the machine quilting frame. (I promise, Rachelle.)

Star Log Cabin Wall hanging

This is a wall hanging from Eleanor Burns’ Star Log Cabin in a Day book. It’s machine pieced and hand quilted (mostly SID and some in the middle of the stars). I completed it on 31 December 2003, I think. It depends on when we actually celebrated Mom’s and oldest DS Nathan’s birthdays that year. (Yes, they share a birthday!) It may have been New Year’s Day 2004. Anyway, this hangs in our dining room in between 6 racks of my Mom’s cup and saucer collection–a place of honor.

This was basically my second quilting project and actually my first one completed. I decided on the spur of the moment to do something quilty for my Mom for Christmas even though I’d just learned to quilt a few months earlier. My goal was to get it done before Christmas. The problem is that I am well known in my family for either being up all night Christmas Eve completing gifts for Christmas Day, or for wrapping up a half completed gift and giving it and then *never* finishing the project! I tried, I *really* tried to get this all done for my Mom before Christmas. . . I managed to get the top done. [sigh] Fortunately, because Mom’s birthday is a week later, I told her I’d have it all quilted for her by her birthday. True to form, I think I was still hand sewing the binding to the back *on* her birthday, but I did get it done!

Oh, and I almost forgot. . . I won a second place ribbon on my wall hanging at the Pahrump Arts Council Fiber Arts Show in 2006.

I’m in the middle of revamping several of my websites–this one included–so I haven’t gotten a lot of piecing done in the last month. The need to have a little more income is forcing me to work on “work” related things. :) I thought I’d make some posts as I update and rearrange things here and at my other quilting website. My next post is about the first-ever finished quilting project.