the Special Quilt

A special quilt for a special lady.  We have a lady, Bea, who always attends Sew Fest with her sister, Mary.  Bea does not sew.  It’s not that she doesn’t know how, she just doesn’t care for it.  Bea comes and helps everyone with cutting strips, fussy cutting embroidered squares, putting blocks up on the design wall for quilt layouts, etc….  This year we decided we’d give Bea a special project.  Mary chose a ‘focus fabric’ and sent a fat quarter to everyone who would be attending Sew Fest with the challenge to make as many quilt blocks using coordinating fabric as they could.  Bea’s challenge was to take the various blocks and create a quilt layout.  What Bea didn’t know was that she would then receive the quilt..  Here is her layout:

Bea entrusted me to bring her quilt home and quilt it.  What a challenge that would be.  I procrastinated and finally decided to simply put it on the frame and get started.  Because of the variety of colors and the busyness of the focus fabric, I chose to use clear monofilament thread.  Each of the 4 corners is the same block pattern done in different fabrics.  Those are the only blocks that are quilted the same.  Each block was quilted differently.  I will show a couple pictures of the quilting, but honestly, with using the monofilament thread the quilting doesn’t show up so well.  But, I am happy with the quilting I did on this and I’m confident that Bea will love her quilt.

And of course, a special quilt required a special label….

So, that’s what I’ve done this week.  Next week will be devoted to more quilting.  I need to get the Sew Fest quilts that I brought home quilted and sent out to the Army hospital who is this year’s recipient of the Patriotic quilts.

Hope everyone has a terrific week,

Katie