labour of love

My friend Andrea made a quilt for her parents for their anniversary. When Andrea contacted me about having it quilted, I had an idea.

Andrea brought the quilt in, we picked a pattern and I started planning. I decided that I would custom quilt the quilt for her as a surprise.

Because of the style of the quilt, I didn't want the quilting to overwhelm the quilt so I  kept it simple; meandering/stippling and outlining.

The hardest block was the one I started with; the courthouse. I just couldn't decide how I wanted to quilt it. I ended up quilting horizontal and vertical lines to give the impression of bricks.

I continued the same theme with the rest of the buildings.

For all the stars, I water-stitched in the background so the stars would just pop.

My favorite part of the entire quilt is this tree. Andrea embroidered the birthdates of her kids on it; the date she and her husband married as well as her parent's wedding date.

When I saw that, I wanted to do another little something to the quilt and quilt some words into it.

Above the church, I quilted the word faith.

And above the brown/tan house, the word family.

The words are not perfect but I think they add a bit of rusticness to the quilt.

There are so many fun thing about the quilt. I had so much fun quilting it. When I was finished, I didn't think I had quilted it that much. At least I thought that until I turned it over. Check out how the quilting shows up on the backing.

That's a whole lot of quilting!

The look on Andrea's face when she came to pick up the quilt was so worth it. Thanx again for letting me have some fun Andrea!