My Mother-In-Law quilts.
Well, I guess to use a more correct term, she pieces. She cuts the fabric and hand sews it into quilt squares, attaches the squares together and creates a quilt top. She takes it to her church in Rock Island, IL and has the church ladies quilt and finish it up.
I love looking at her quilts. She hand sews each one and they are amazing. They are pieces of her life, her personality, her skill and handy work all wrapped up into a beautiful quilt to keep you warm.
I tried going to this quilting club in town to keep my motivation going and all the ladies looked at me like I had 5 heads because I was hand sewing. "oh, it'll go much faster with a machine dear" Yeah, yeah. I know but there is something about creating it BY HAND to me. Besides, our house is around 800 sq feet and where would I set up a sewing machine?
I had my Mom-In-Law show me how to piece when she came for a visit probably 3 years ago and we started a Mom-In-Law/Daughter-In-Law quilt together.
She made 1/2 of the squares needed and I made the other half. And I'm slow.... really, really, really slow. I finally finished all my squares (in the meantime Mom-In-Law finished 3 or 4 quilts completely) and I'm sewing the rows together.
I have 2 more rows of squares to put together.
The quilt is sorta ugly.
Her color choices and pattern tastes don't always match mine. The pattern is super simple because I'm such a beginner. Things are uneven because of my lack o' skill. I told her to tell the church quilting ladies that there is something wrong with me when she submits it to them to finish because my hand stitching is rarely even, the straight lines are hardly ever straight - they get wider and then get smaller again. You'd almost think I was drinking as I stitched!
(maybe I was and maybe I wasn't - I'm not tellin')
When I get my rows done, I'll attach them, put a border all around the quilt top and send it to my Mom-In-Law to give to the church ladies. The end is in sight! I need to get cracking because my Mom-In-Law is in her 80's and she isn't going to live forever... as much as we'd like her to!
I want to be able to share this completed work of art with her and own this quilt created by all things feminine stitching, touching, finishing, piecing and quilting ... no matter how ugly it may be, I am going to LOVE this thing we worked on together.
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3 comments:
Hey now...WHERE IS THE PICTURE!!
I started a quilt for my son and his new wife...8 years ago..err...well...it has a whole lot of blocks done..but, I gotta stich it all together yet??!! yeesh...and you think you are slow, heck I might give it to them for their 50th anniversary at this rate. Show me your quilt though..gotta see!
I can't believe you're hand sewing an entire quilt! Good for you. I used to sew quite a lot, and at one time worked for an upholsterer. Nothing like sitting at a sewing machine to teach you how to sew really fast and really well. I don't think I could ever hand sew after that.
DebH - maybe once all the rows are together - they are all wrinkly and stacked on each other in a corner of the living room right now! Hope to get another row done this weekend... you try to get one row done too! :)
Susan - I can definately see how a sewing machine would whip right thru the piecing! Sewing machines do scare me a bit... bobbins and winding the thread all around and up and down and thru and over... complicated! I should take a basic sewing class one o' these days...
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